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Meditations on the communic 
office 








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MEDITATIONS ON THE 
COMMUNION OFFICE 


The Works of Rev. J.G.H. Barry, D.D. 


Rector of Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York 


Meditations on the Communion Office 
A Devotional Study with Liturgical Notes 
Two Volumes. 12mo., cloth. 694 pages. $5.00. 


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rmroermnrrran 
TG LON Coen e 


MEDITATIONS 


ON TH: 


COMMUNION 
OFFICE 


“By J G.FL.Barry, ID yA gLiroe. nD), 
“Volume 1 





PUBLISHED BY EDWIN §. 
GORHAM, at 11 West 45 St. 
in NEW YORK, a® Dt. MCMXXAV 


COPYRIGHT 
BY 


EDWIN S. GORHAM 
1924 


VAIL -BALLOU PRESS, INC. 
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK 


Ake 


JESUS PRIEST AND VICTIM 
THIS BOOK IS OFFERED 
IN THANKSGIVING FOR THE INCREASE 
OF EUCHARISTIC DEVOTIONS. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
In 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


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PREFACE 


Possibly some sort of explanation is necessary of the 
mixed nature of the contents of this book. I can only say 
that if it is a compound rather than a simple treatment of 
its subject it is because nearly forty years experience has 
taught me that usefulness and simplicity of treatment do 
not of necessity go together. Other books of meditations 
that I have published have been tried out in parochial 
use: these meditations have not been so used. Two or 
three of them have been published in part in the American 
Church Monthly, otherwise they are now published for 
the first time. 

My friend and associate, the Rev. H. K. Pierce has 
kindly prepared for me the liturgical notes which I feel 
add materially to the value of the volume. 





CONTENTS 


VOLUME I 


Lorp’s PRAYER 

CoLLEcT FOR PuRITY 
Ten COMMANDMENTS . 
SUMMARY OF THE LAW 
Kyrie ELeIson . 
COLLECT FOR GUIDANCE . 
COLLECT FOR THE Day . 
EPISTLE 

GOSPEL 

CREED . 


OFFERTORY 


PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH . 


EXHORTATIONS 
CONFESSION 
ABSOLUTION, 
COMFORTABLE WorDS 


SuURSUM CORDA . 


PAGE 


MOLES 
. I4!I 
reLOR 
. 185 
. 205 
ey 
- 249 
eT 4 
- 293 
ayy! 
- 339 





THE FIRST MEDITATION 
PLEO. BA yeh hei 


The present Prayer Book Mass, in all its various forms, 
English, American, Scottish, South African, or whatever 
they may be, is an outgrowth of the Mass in the First Prayer 
Book of Edward VI. The Mass of the First Prayer Book 
was, so far as we know, the work of one man, Archbishop 
Cranmer. What he did, in the main, was to translate and 
adapt the ancient Latin Mass, keeping its general sense and 
order intact. But he did omit some of its important feat- 
ures, and he introduced other and novel features, some of 
them borrowed from the new foreign Protestantism. From 
an examination of his work and from our knowledge of his 
theological views it is evident that Cranmer’s endeavor 
was to revise the Mass in such a way as to minimize its 
sacrificial character and to emphasize those features which 
suggest a Protestant “communion office.’ We may thank 
God that it was impossible for Cranmer to travel very far 
along the road of his “reforming” desires. The people of 
England were still Catholic and would not tolerate the 
suppression of the Holy Sacrifice. But Cranmer went as 
far as he dared in that direction. What we should remem- 
ber is, that our Mass is a direct descendant of the ancient 
Latin Mass of the West, which was universal (with a few 
minor exceptions) throughout Europe. It is easy, and very 
misleading, to magnify the local diversities. The old Eng- 
lish “Use of Sarum,” for example, was simply the Roman 
Mass as used in England. Its Canon which is the heart and 
center, was identical with that on the continent. Its pecu- 
liarities were mostly of a minor nature. Of course it had 
its own calendar, with commemorations of saints especially 
English, just as, to-day, the calendar followed in France 
differs from that of Spain or Italy. 


Let us listen to the words of our Lord: 


Where two or three are gathered together in my Name, © 
there am I in the midst of them. 


Let us picture to ourselves: 
CONGREGATION gathered for the early com- 


munion. It is a village church on a cold winter 
morning. There is but a dim, grey morning light, that 
filters in through the pale windows. You are conscious 
of fields of snow outside stretching away to pine covered 
hills. Now and again the silence is broken by the sharp 
crack of the frost. The slow drift of the smoke from 
the chimneys here and there tells you that the village is 
slowly waking up. It is warm in here; there is the acrid 
odor of pine-branches, for the Christmas season is not 
yet over. The flame of the candles on the altar cuts 
sharply through the dusk. The white and gold vestments 
of the priest and the red cassock of the server are accents 
on the dun half-light of the chancel. 

There is a small congregation; a couple of men, a dozen 
women, a few children. They kneel in the dusk, with 
bowed heads, listening to the words that come softly 
from the altar—This is my Body that is given for you: 
This is my Blood that is shed. They go forward to re- 
ceive the Holy Gifts. They kneel again and receive the 
peace of God; and then go out into the winter morning. 
It is day now; the sun touches the hill top; the snow 
sparkles in its light. It is light too in their hearts, for 

3 


4 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the Divine Presence is there to illumine their minds and 
fill their souls with the joy of union with their Maker and 
Redeemer. 


Consider, first, 


This that we have been looking at is a meeting of the 
Christian Brotherhood. They are all one in Christ Jesus. 
They have partaken of the Sacrament of Unity, and have 
thereby strengthened the bond that unites them to their 
Risen Lord and to one another. This scene, with but 
slightly altered circumstances, has been repeated daily 
for centuries. It began in that Upper Room in Jerusa- 
lem where the Lord, in the night in which He was be- 
trayed, took Bread, and blessed it, and gave it to His 
disciples. It was the same Upper Room, perhaps, in 
which abode the Apostles, with the women, and Mary the 
Mother of Jesus, and his brethren; and where, after Pen- 
tecost, they continued, breaking the Bread at home. It 
continued in Rome in the church that was in the house of 
Priscilla and Aquila. The heathen governor, Pliny, 
found the Christians in Bythinia, meeting on a fixed day 
at sunrise, to sing hymns to Christ as God. They met in 
the Catacombs to celebrate their mysteries on the altar- 
tomb of some loved martyr. When they had liberty they 
built splendid Basilicas and mighty Cathedrals to en- 
shrine their worship; but it was still the same worship 
that had begun in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. To- 
day, over the face of Christendom the same meetings 
take place; we join in them, as the Christian Brotherhood, 
still singing hymns to Christ as God, and binding our- 
selves to Christ and to one another by the reception of 
the Flesh that is meat indeed, and the Blood that is drink 
indeed. 


THE LORD'S PRAYER 5 


Consider, second, 


This is the Body of Christ—a supernatural Body. 
The Church of God is composed of those who have been 
baptised into Christ, and are thereby regenerated and 
made partakers of the divine nature. They gather to 
their worship, not as individuals, seeking their own ends, 
but as the Body of Christ bent on a common worship— 
the offering of the One Sacrifice forever, that thereby 
they “may obtain remission of their sins and all other 
benefits of his passion.” ‘They receive the “Most precious 
Body and Blood” of their Head, in order that they, the 
members, “may be filled with grace and heavenly bene- 
diction, and made one Body with him, that he may dwell 
in them and they in him.” The “two or three,’ the little 
congregation in the village church, are one with the “Holy 
church throughout all the world.” Visibly, they are but 
a minority of the people in this place: invisibly, they are 
one with the faithful through all the world, nay, with 
the sainted dead; and their worship is a common wor- 
ship “with angels and archangels and all the company of 
heaven.” 


Let us therefore pray, 


To realize our privilege as members of the Christian 
Brotherhood, and partakers of the Christian Mysteries. 

O Blessed Jesus, who in the Sacrament of the Altar 
has left us a memorial of thy passion; grant us so to 
celebrate the Sacred Mysteries of thy Body and Blood, 
that we may ever perceive within ourselves the fruits 
of our redemption; through the same Jesus Christ, our 
Lord. 


6 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


THE Lorp’s PRAYER 


I wonder if one of our troubles is not that we are too 
familiar with God. Have we lost largely the sense of 
awe? The fear of God is so obvious a spiritual quality 
in the saints, is so outstanding a feature in all Biblical 
teaching, and is so lamentably absent from our present 
day preaching. No doubt the spiritual quality we are 
indicating is not servile fear or terror, but awe, a deep 
sense of the majesty, the uniqueness, of God: but have 
we not in great measure lost this? Do we not indeed 
minimize those aspects and doctrines of the Christian 
religion which inspire religious fear? We have become 
so terrorized under the browbeating of infidelity and 
“liberalism” that we hardly dare mention hell; we preach 
a placid, good-natured Deity Who is conceived as mak- 
ing life as smooth for us as He can. We stress con- 
tinually the quality of love, but our conception of love 
becomes more and more colorless until it fades into a 
toneless sentimentalism. Surely this is spiritually dis- 
astrous. Surely the conception of love as found em- 
bodied in our Lord is virile and energetic, is a passion 
which sends Him into the world to face ignominy and 
poverty and distress and death. Surely, if we have love 
of this temper we count on an answering love in God 
which is also justice. If it is a love that is willing to 
* endure suffering it is also a love which will not shrink 
from requiring suffering in those who are associated with 
Him: if it is a love that bears a Cross it is a love which 
will not hesitate to require cross-bearing in those who 
would follow: if it is a love that abandons all it will not 
hesitate to demand that the disciple sell all as the prep- 
aration for discipleship. The spectacle of Incarnate 


THE LORD'S PRAYER 7 


Love, gaunt and naked and dying upon the Cross brings 
home the meaning of the saying: ‘“‘God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son,” and that is a 
love which inspires not sentimental services, but drives 
us to our knees in awe and holy fear. God is the “God 
of my joy and gladness” but He is discovered to be such 
after we have passed through the gate of a broken and 
contrite heart. 

This sense of awe and reverence is best inspired, I 
think, by the thought of God the Blessed Trinity,—of 
God so far as we can think of Him in Himself. God is 
Spirit: “no man hath seen God at any time’; He is One 
“who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which 
no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, 
nor can see.” Within this splendor of the divine 
Unity there is a Trinity of Persons, Father, Son, and 
(Holy Spirit: and these, the eternal Three in One, 
are impelled by love to enter upon the work of man’s 
salvation. The Father sends the Son to be the Saviour 
of the world: the Son sends the Holy Spirit to be His 
Vicar in His Kingdom on earth. But there is no divi- 
sion in the divine Unity, and where One is, there also are 
Three; and what One does, that also is done by Three— 
and what is done by the Three in One is done for each indi- 
vidual human soul. As we strive to take in this fact, shall 
we not be filled with the deepest love, which at the same 
time is deepest awe and reverence? The Psalmist catches 
the two aspects of our thought: “O worship the Lord 
in the beauty of holiness: let the whole earth stand in 
awe of Him.” 

I dwell upon these things as a prelude to our study 
because our first step is that of preparation, of prepara- 
tion to meet God. Entering upon the study of the Com- 


8 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


munion Office we understand that the service we have 
before us is essentially a service of meeting. “O send 
out thy light and thy truth that they may lead me: and 
bring me unto thy holy hill and to thy dwelling, and that 
I may go unto the altar of God, even unto the God of 
my joy and gladness,” the priest is praying as he stands at 
the foot of the altar. And we, too, in our place, are re- 
peating in substance at least, the same prayer. We are 
praying that this meeting with God, the God Who is 
presently coming to the altar, in fulfilment of His prom- 
ises, may be to us joy and gladness. And we wait with 
bowed heads and stilled hearts as the awe of the divine 
Presence falls upon us. “Lord, I am not worthy that 
Thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word 
only and Thy servant shall be healed.” The healing we 
feel must precede the coming. The Lord must come to 
a clean place. 

Are we prepared, then, we ask ourselves, as we see 
the preparation of the priest. What, just, do we mean 
by preparation for the Mass? We are drawing near 
unto God. God is about to come to us with a Presence 
so intimate that we conceive of It as indwelling. For 
some moments after our Communion we shall be living 
tabernacles of the Blessed Trinity. We have known that 
this was to be, we have purposed to make our Commun- 
ions on such and such a day. What have we been doing 
to prepare ourselves for so stupendous a moment? 

There are a number of elements which enter into the 
preparation for Holy Communion. There is in the first 
place what we generally call the distant or remote prep- 
aration; we might also call it the habitual preparation, 
for it consists essentially in keeping ourselves in a state 
of grace. Naturally, we do not conceive of the life of 


THE LORD'S PRAYER 9 


the Christian as a series of curves, passing from a state 
of sin to a state of grace, and back again, any more than 
we conceive of a normal life as a series of journeys from 
home to hospital and back again. Accident may befall 
any life and one may find one’s self in a hospital, but 
one looks to get out permanently. So one looks to keep 
out of mortal sin and abide in a state of grace. But 
this keeping in a state of grace is the habitual prepara- 
tion for the Eucharist, it is a state that has to be main- 
tained, and other Eucharists are the chief help in its 
maintenance: but the effectiveness of the Eucharist is in- 
creased by the receptivity of our souls at the time of 
reception. Hence we cannot and ought not simply to 
assume that we are in a state of grace and therefore 
prepared; but we are bound by our reverence for the 
Hidden Presence to use all means to assure the best pos- 
sible preparation, the highest possible receptivity. 

It is elementary that respect for self, not to say respect 
for God, requires a certain physical preparation. At- 
tendance at a royal or presidential reception requires a 
certain preparation of the person and of the dress: surely, 
attendance upon the King of kings requires no less. 
Not, to be sure, elaborate dress,—that would be quite out 
of place—but dress that marks a sense of cleanliness 
and order. It is not necessary to dwell on that further 
than to say that the child should be carefully taught the 
need of such physical preparation as a part of his train- 
ing to become a communicant. Reverence is not a natural 
virtue; it must therefore be taught. 

A second element of physical preparation is fasting. 
From the earliest times it has been the custom of the 
‘Church to receive the Blessed Sacrament as the first food 
of the day, to receive fasting from the midnight before 


IO MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the reception. This was, perhaps, the direction of S. 
Paul, and was among those things which he tells the Cor- 
inthians, after rebuking them for their irreverence, “I 
will set in order when I come.” In any case the ques- 
tion is of the Eucharist, and has since become a matter 
of canon law, and is now a part of the canon law of 
the universal Church. In the Churches of the Anglican 
rite there has been and still is an enormous amount of 
laxity in this matter and a conspicuous failure on the part 
of ecclesiastical authority to uphold the law. Nowhere, 
perhaps, is our lack of any adequate discipline more con- 
spicuous. But that fact, far from excusing, only lays 
the greater obligation upon the individual who is con- 
scious of the mind of the Church. Certainly we have 
no right to indulge ourselves under the shadow of the 
prevailing laxity, rather must we bear clear witness 
to the teaching of the Church. No law of the Church 
ceases to be of obligation because large numbers ignore 
it and authority fails to enforce it; those who know are 
bound to obey. 

In this case the grounds of the law are sufficiently 
obvious. Fasting before communion is an act of rev- 
erence and respect,—let us make an act of sacrifice in 
the self-denial that is involved. The act may seem in- 
insignificant in itself, but the significance of an act of 
sacrifice does not spring from its size, but from its mo- 
tive. It is a small thing that we can frequently offer. It 
has the value both of an act of sacrifice and of an act 
of discipline. Moreover, the partaking of food has the 
effect of dulling the senses and clouding the spirit so that 
we are less responsive to spiritual appeal. To receive 
the Holy Communion after eating and after the affairs 
of the day have laid hold upon us is to receive in a much 


THE LORD'S PRAYER hit 


less responsive and recollected state than at an earlier 
hour. Naturally, the earlier hour has to be guarded. 
There are, no doubt, households where the getting off 
to the early Mass is attended with rush and hurry, with 
shortened and distracted prayers, and undesirable mental 
disturbance. That can and should be avoided. Its ex- 
istence is one of the phenomena of a disorderly and dis- 
tracted life. 

This is a preparation of the body: there is also a 
preparation of the mind and spirit. Of that cleansing 
of the soul which results in our abiding in a state of 
grace I shall speak elsewhere. That for the present is 
assumed, and I am concerned with what I may call the 
habitual preparation for the reception of the sacrament. 
We can perhaps best describe this state of preparation as 
a life which habitually is recollected and lived in the 
presence of God. A life, in other words, which is hab- 
itually using the grace which is received. The com- 
municant who is aiming at spiritual growth knows that 
the growth depends on the constant use of the grace re- 
ceived, that the law of the spiritual life is grace for 
grace. There are, no doubt, communicants to whom the 
reception of the Communion is a pious act, an obligation 
of Churchmanship which has no before or after. Such 
Communions do not fit im to anything, they are a bit of 
spiritual politeness, and the best we can hope for them is 
that they work no harm because on the whole they are 
well-intentioned, though ignorant. With such Commun- 
ions we are not concerned here: we are thinking of those 
which are items in a continuous spiritual experience. 
They distinctly fit in and are a calculated part of life. 
They are incidents in a life lived steadily in the conscious- 
ness of a spiritual vocation as the life of the child of 


12 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


God, a life continually supported by participation in the 
life of God. Sacramental grace for the spirit is con- 
ceived of as of the same continuous necessity as physical 
food for the body. “Give us this day our daily bread,” 
consciously covers all the needs of the human being, bod- 
ily or spiritual, and.because the partaking of the Holy 
Communion is the reception of the very Body and Blood 
of Incarnate God, the act becomes the actual center toward 
which all life tends. Life is controlled and disciplined 
and shaped with reference to the act of Communion, 
its occupations, its very relaxations and amusements, 
come under the control of the dominating purpose. Con- 
versation is restrained and quieted; thought is dis- 
ciplined ; all life is illumined by the sense of a Presence 
which, though intensified at certain moments, is never 
wholly lost. This is the trusting sense of the divine 
Presence that the Psalmist felt: “Thou art about my 
path, and about my bed: and spiest out all my ways. 
For lo, there is not a word in my tongue, but thou, O 
Lord, knowest it altogether.” Such a life, because it is 
constantly in the presence of God, passes without sense 
of wrench or division between sacred and secular to the 
Communion of the Sacramental Presence. 

But even such a life, taken in its highest development, 
does not feel that it can dispense with preparation of a 
concrete sort as the preface to the act of communion, 
and, indeed, such a life least of all. In proportion as we 
realise the meaning of our Lord’s Presence in the Sac- 
rament of the altar shall we feel the need of preparation 
to approach Him. To feel little or no need of prepara- 
tion is to feel little or no reality in the Presence. We 
therefore resort to means of preparation which look, not 


THE LORD'S PRAYER 13 


to any general Communion with our Lord, but to the 
receiving of Him at some special time. 

Just what the preparation is to be in detail is largely a 
matter of individual preference. It may involve the felt 
need of confession, of which I shall speak later. It cer- 
tainly involves the need of self-examination. If self- 
examination has been a daily practice, as surely it should 
be, there will be a review of the results since our last 
confession. And the review ought to be made with a 
view to determining just what our needs actually are to- 
day. Self-examination is apt to stop with the discovery 
of sins, and not go on to the discovery of remedies. 
But what are our needs at present we must know if our 
prayers are to be intelligent. We are not going to ask 
God to make us good. We are going to ask for light 
and strength to use the grace He will certainly give in 
such ways as will make us more like Him. I fancy we 
fail a good deal through indefiniteness—and _indefinite- 
ness which is the result of an unintelligent self- 
examination. 

We will also need certain prayers. The books of de- 
votion which are so plentiful and varied will adequately 
supply the need of formal prayers as a preparation for 
Mass. The question constantly arises as to the time of 
the formal preparation—whether the night before Com- 
munion or in the morning. That seems to me a question 
of detail,—it can only be intelligently settled in view of 
individual circumstances. What would seem indispen- 
sable would be an adequate time of quiet. For many, no 
doubt, that will be on the night before,—for others, in 
the morning before Mass. My own thought as to the 
preferable time and place would be that the immediate 


4 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


preparation for Communion should be made in the 
church before the Blessed Sacrament and immediately 
before Communion. But for many that of course is not 
possible. Yet perhaps not so impossible for many as 
many think. 

The habit of being on time for services seems not widely 
spread; I want therefore to emphasize the importance 
‘ of being on time at Mass and the irreverence involved 
in being voluntarily late. To drift in when Mass is half 
over and then go to the altar to receive the Communion 
betrays a very inadequate conception (to put it mildly) of 
the sacramental act. We should be in our place in the 
church sometime before the service begins in order to col- 
lect our thoughts and become thoroughly recollected. If it 
be possible, it is well to be in church early enough to make 
at least part of our immediate preparation there. We 
have come to the place that God has appointed to meet 
His people. We are to take part in the act which unites 
heaven and earth. The One Sacrifice is to be presented 
and we are purposing to partake of it. There is no need 
to stress the wonder and the awe which are the natural 
accompaniments of such an act. We see the priest come 
to the altar and begin the service; and then we see a man 
or woman coming hastily in and fussily getting settled, 
disturbing others and himself or herself, utterly unrec- 
ollected,—and we cannot help wondering what possibly 
the Miass can mean to them! 

The worshipper is present in what we may call an of- 
ficial capacity. What is taking place is the offering of 
the One Sacrifice by the One Body. The priest at the 
altar is the link between heaven and earth: he is at once 
the instrument of our Lord and of the Body. He is 
nothing apart from our Lord and he is nothing apart 


THE LORD'S PRAYER 15 


from the Body. Through him the Body is offering the 
Sacrifice ; but he is not separate from the Body and all the 
members of the Body are acting in unison with him. 
This fact implies on the part of the members of the con- 
gregation close attention to the course of the service. 
To engage in acts of private devotion during the action 


of the Mass, and to detach one’s self from that action, .. 


is to decline one’s place in the Body. There are other 
times for private devotions: now is the time of the 
Church’s Offering : now is the time of the most stupendous 
act that can take place in this world; and it betrays a very 
inadequate notion of the nature of the act to ignore it 
and to busy one’s self about one’s private devotions. 
There are times and ways of bringing our private needs 
before our Lord in and through the Mass. I have al- 
ready pointed out one of them, the habit of being early 
and getting our thoughts arranged and our petitions 
ordered in our minds before the service begins. Then 
there are the intervals in the service,—the time of the 
priest’s preparation, the offertory, the Communion and so 
forth, when time is given for private use. If we know 
precisely what we want these intervals will be found 
sufficient. 

If we know precisely what we want—this is the key 
to the whole matter of private devotions in connection 
with the Mass. Our preparation for Mass, whether 
we are to receive or not, should include the proposal of a 
definite intention. We are no doubt taking part in an 
act of adoration and praise and thanksgiving made by 
the whole Body of Christ to God the Blessed Trinity. 
But also, by the mercy of God, it is permitted to us to 
include in this offering our own needs and desires. In 
other words, we are permitted to offer the Sacrifice for 


a 


16 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


our own personal intention. Consider for a moment the 
wonder of this privilege. Jesus Christ, very God and 
Man, offers Himself continually for us in heaven. His 
Church here on earth makes the same offering, pleads 
the same Sacrifice. I, a member of the Church, am not 
only privileged to join in the offering of the Church; 
but I am also permitted to join to the general intention 
of the Church, and the particular intention of the priest 
who is offering, my own individual intention—I may 
plead my own personal needs before the Heavenly 
Throne in union with the One Sacrifice of my incarnate 
Lord. When I realise this unspeakable privilege, surely 
I shall carefully go over my life before Mass and deter- 
mine what it is that I am going to lay before my Saviour 
this day. I shall not come into the church with merely 
a vague notion of purposing an act of worship, but I 
shall come with a collected and purposed petition, with 
my mind concentrated upon the request I am to proffer. 
This will remain uppermost in my mind and will be 
specially presented to our Lord at the moment of the 
consecration and also at my communion. And after the 
service I will thank my Lord for having heard me, and 
submit myself to His will. 

I am inclined to dwell upon the wonder of the Mass 
from the point of view of personal privilege. We look 
back sometimes, I suppose, with a vague envy of those 
first disciples who gathered about our Lord. We are 
perhaps reading a chapter in the New Testament, and we 
come across some story of a talk of our Lord with the 
Apostles—perhaps that most wonderful of all talks in 
the Upper Chamber on the night of the Supper. The 
Book falls from the hand and the mind tries to recon- 
struct the wonder of the scene, dwells on the nearness 


THE LORD'S PRAYER 17 


of our Lord, of His personal love, of the eager response 
of the Apostles. That is a splendor which has passed 
away forever we think: or, if it is ever to be renewed it 
will be under the conditions of the life of the blessed in 
heaven. We are shut of all that, we lead lives that are 
dull and colorless and uninspired. But think. To- 
motrow morning you may go to church and take © 
part in the Blessed Sacrament. The Apostles were 
present at the offering of the Sacrifice on Calvary, but 
quite unknowing of the reality which was taking place. 
You know; you are joining in the offering of the One 
Sacrifice presented for the sins of the whole world. Pres- 
ently you will kneel and receive the consecrated elements 
and go back to your place. What has happened? You 
have become a living Tabernacle containing Incarnate 
God. You can enter into a communion with your 
Saviour infinitely closer than was possible for the Apostles 
at any time before Pentecost. God is in you and you are 
in Him. His love for you is so great as this, that He has 
come to dwell with you. And while the Sacramental 
Presence lasts but a few moments, the union of our 
Blessed Lord with your soul need never be dissolved; 
we evermore dwell in Him and He in us. You can go 
through all the work of your day with the consciousness 
of the divine Presence. Whenever you will, you may 
pause to commune with Him. Go out, then, recollected, 
go out feeling that you possess the companionship of 
God ; that God is yours and you are His: 


Not every soul may hear, 
Yet to the listening ear, 
God’s lips are ever near. 


} A 
RAs 
) ye Air) 
i bs Geary 





THE SECOND MEDITATION 
LEE COLLECT ROR. PUREE 


The more one studies the history and growth and devel- 
opment of the Mass the more one is impressed with the un- 
failing selective taste and judgment which has guided the 
Church. The liturgy is like a living body, growing, chang- 
ing, developing; adding an organ here, abandoning one 
there, where it is no longer needed, until finally the per- 
fect organism is produced. Commissions for liturgical 
revision should realize that there is no such thing as the 
production, out of hand, of an ideal liturgy. 

The Preparation, said by priest and server at the foot 
of the altar, is an instance of gradual liturgical growth. 
Some sort of preparatory prayers were always said. The 
celebrant must make himself fit, so far as that may be, 
for the tremendous act before him. The fixed form we 
now have is the latest part of the Mass, not stereotyped 
till in the sixteenth century. Its essence is Psalm xliii, the 
use of which is of course suggested by its fourth verse, and 
the Confiteor. The psalm is omitted at requiems and in 
Passiontide. Versicles and responses follow the absolution. 
The celebrant then mounts to the altar, saying as he goes 
a further prayer for pardon, then kisses the altar, calling on 
God in the name of the merits of His saints, and proceeds 
to the epistle corner, where the Mass proper begins. The 
Lord’s Prayer and Collect for Purity, according to all old 
English and Western precedent, belong in the priest’s private 
preparation before the beginning of the Mass, and some of 
the Prayer Book revision projects provide that they be 
returned to their old position, the Mass proper beginning 
with the Introit. 


Let us listen to the words of the Psalm: 


Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right 
spirit within me. 


Let us picture to ourselves: 


HE penitent David. In moments for real peni- 

tence sin is apt to present itself to us as ingrati- 
tude. Our minds go back over the past and recall all 
the mercies of God. Who more than David could recall 
a past glorious with marks of the divine favor? He 
would think of The Time when, an innocent boy, he 
passed his days in the fields caring for the flocks—what 
pleasant days they were, full of joy and the love of 
Jehovah. And then God took him away from the sheep- 
folds, that he might feed Jacob his people, and Israel 
his inheritance. Those first days of the kingdom, hard 
and worrying as they were, were still days full of the 
manifest favor of God. In all that long struggle with 
Saul, God never deserted him. He found that men 
could not be trusted, but he could always trust God. Then 
came the proud days when he was acknowledged king 
over all Israel, God’s representative toward the people, 
the righteous ruler, who on earth reflects the righteousness 
of God. And then the plunge from the height to which 
he had been raised into the vilest sin. One thinks that 
when he shut his eyes he must always have seen the 
murdered Uriah. Watch David kneel there in penitence. 
What of all the thoughts that come to him is the bitterest ? 

21 


22 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


I should think it would be those words of God in which 
He recalls to the fallen king all he had done for him in 
the past, and then adds: And if that had been too little, 
I would moreover have given unto thee such and such 
things. There is no limit to the bounty of God; and 
there is no limit to his mercy. What can the sinner do 
but cry: Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a 
right spirit within me? 


Consider, first, 


That repentance is a part of our preparation to 
approach God. The priests under the old law bathed 
themselves before they undertook their sacred ministry, 
signifying thereby their need of inward cleansing in 
their drawing near to the Most High. And we know 
so much more of God than they did. Our Lord has 
proclaimed the law of approach: The pure in heart shall 
see God. I had almost called it a terrible law—inward 
purity is such a difficult thing. We get stained and 
dusty as we go along the way of life. There are so 
many defiling things that our life comes in contact with 
every day, one feels that the cleansing of repentance is 
needful all the time. It is to meet this need that the 
Church puts in all her offices, through which we approach 
God with our worship, confession of sinfulness and 
prayer for cleansing. It is the bath before the sacri- 
fice. There are people who resent this constant peniten- 
tial attitude of the Christian; who say, impatiently, “Why 
are you always mourning for your sins? Your attitude 
kills all the joy out of life.’ But a Christian never feels 
that. One feels the failure that sin implies; but one 
feels, too, the pity and the love of God, when one goes 
to Him with the confession of one’s failure. One feels 


THE COLLECT FOR PURITY 22 


the ingratitude that sin is after one has experienced the 
divine blessings; but the divine blessings are renewed to 
the penitent—God endlessly gives us the renewal that 
we need. And if we go out to the battle in the morning 
with our armour clean and bright, and return in the eve- 
ning stained with the blood and dust of the conflict, we 
know that as long as we keep close to God He will renew 
our strength; and through the ever-renewed battle we are 
making the partial advances that shall finally end in com- 
plete victory. 


Consider, second, 


Whether your attitude toward God is that of one striv- 
ing to attain to inward purity of heart. So often we are 
content with the outward purity of conduct. David, no 
doubt, thought that his office of king would cover any 
breaches of the moral law. He was only acting as kings 
were accustomed to act. I do not imagine that any of 
his courtiers blamed his conduct or thought it strange. 
He did not remember that he was not like ordinary kings: 
he was the anointed of Jehovah. Consider, whether you 
have let the ordinary and customary morality of the time 
in any degree replace the spiritual ideals of the Beati- 
tudes. You have quite a different standard from the 
world—the standard of the anointed of God, of one who 
has been brought near to God in the sacramental union 
of baptism. Not for you is the morality of this world 
that looketh upon the outward appearance, but the spir- 
itual morality of the Gospel which is the application to 
life of the mind of Him that in judging looketh upon 
the heart. Consider, whether you are judging your life 
by this standard. If you are, surely your life is a life 
of penitence. 


24. MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Let us pray, then, 


Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit 
within me. Pray that you may never shrink from the 
application to your life of the standard of the Gospel, 
whatever of pain and shame it may involve. Pray for 
grace to bring your life, with all its failures, constantly 
before God. 

Pour out, O Lord, we beseech thee, the Spirit of grace 
upon us, and cast out from us whatever of evil we have 
incurred by the fraud of the devil, or by earthly cor- 
ruption; that being cleansed within and without, we may 
ever render unto Thee a pure worship, and may the more 
readily obtain what we fitly and reasonably ask; through 
Jesus Christ, our Lord. 


THE COLLEGR PORLEURITY 


The reason for repentance is that we may be in a fit 
state to meet God. We are preparing to receive our 
Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and it is before all things 
necessary that we should be in a proper state, a state 
that at the least is without the stain of mortal sin. The 
Collect for Purity, which is a part of our personal prep- 
aration for the Communion which is to follow, goes at 
once to the essence of the matter in that it stresses purity 
as the prerequisite of our approach to God. It conceives 
of the worshipper as one who is deeply sensible of the 
divine nearness, who pictures God as seeing the very 
depths of his heart. The divine omniscience is a very 
real thing to him and he shrinks as he remembers what 
God, Who looks into his heart, may there see. He 
therefore prays for cleansing that he may be not unfit 
for the approach to God which is following in the Mass. 


THE COLLECT FOR PURITY 25 


“Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts’; it goes to the 
very root. It is there, in that bubbling spring so out 
of the control of most of us, that we are conscious that 
our trouble lies. All sin begins in a thought; every act 
of rebellion against God is born in a human heart. We 
may well pray, then, that this source of iniquity be 
cleansed. 

The heart in Biblical psychology stands for that which 
is most intimate in men, for the foyer of all action, of 
impulse toward good or evil. The hypocrite is one whose 
heart is removed from God, though he may profess al- 
legiance and obedience with his lips. ‘‘Forasmuch as this 
people draw nigh unto me, and with their mouth and 
with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart 
far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of 
men which hath been taught them; therefore, behold, I 
will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, 
even a marvellous work and a wonder; and the wisdom of 
their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of 
their prudent men shall be hid.” On the other hand, the 
heart of the religious is the treasure house where the di- 
vine precepts are stored. “My son, forget not my law; 
but let thy heart keep my commandments.” Hence the 
importance of keeping close watch on this priceless pos- 
session. “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it 
are the issues of life.” This is the constant note of the 
Old Testament (there is no need to multiply instances), 
and it is a note taken up and repeated by our Lord Him- 
self in His teaching. “Out of the abundance of the 
heart,” He teaches, “the mouth speaketh.” There evil 
finds its point of contact with the human soul. “But 
the things which proceed out of the mouth come forth 
out of the heart; and they defile the man. For out of 


26 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, 
fornications, thefts, false witness, railings.” The same 
note is sharply accentuated: “But I say unto you, that 
every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath 
committed adultery with her already in his heart.” And, 
on the other hand, the heart, stimulated by grace, is the 
very organ of our response to God. “And he answering 
said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with 
all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” 

A disciplined life, therefore, means first of all a life 
which is disciplined in thought. Here is no doubt the 
chief cause of Christian failure, that this is not so. Our 
thoughts run about like a flock of silly sheep, and we 
sit idly by like a careless herd-boy, paying no attention 
to their wanderings, till in peril ourselves, controlled by 
thought rather than controlling. 

“T cannot help what I think” is the feeble wail which 
often meets Christian teaching on this point. One is 
apt to shrug one’s shoulders with a movement of impa- 
tience and contempt. But there is a very large amount 
of truth in this seemingly feeble protest. For how stands 
the case? It stands thus: There is practically nothing 
in the education of the modern child that teaches the 
moral necessity of the control of thought; nothing to 
teach the vast importance of selecting the subjects of 
thought. The new school of psychologists are emphasiz- 
ing the great amount of thought that human beings spend 
on sexual matters: is there anywhere in modern education 
an attempt to teach self-control in thought? Moralists 
begin altogether too far down the line when they confine 
their teaching to self-control in actions. Our Lord has 
the true psychology: “But I say unto you, that every 


THE COLLECT FOR PURITY 27 


one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath com- 
mitted adultery with her already in his heart.” And St. 
James is equally true to nature: “but each man is tempted, 
when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. 
Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and 
the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death.” 

We wake up, most of us, sometime in adult life, to 
the perception that our minds are a sucking whirlpool | 
of uncontrolled thought; that in the matter of thought we 
are utterly without discipline. We had imagined that 
control of thought at most meant the power of concen- 
tration on a selected subject; but this had meant study 
only, and had not been carried into the moral field. If 
we had gained any power of attention we had not prac- 
tised it in the realm of the moral. Consequently when we 
were not engaged in some definite work which required 
all our thought for its execution, thought went its own 
way, and like an errant child, amused itself as it would. 
We wandered through the garden of life, plucking such 
flowers and fruits as attracted us, without a thought as 
to whether they were wholesome or poisonous. 

And in a broader field, think how we educate ourselves 
by the choices we make. Our vocation, whatever that 
may be, commonly requires the expenditure of a good 
part of our time and energy. But our avocations? The 
strain of work relaxed how do we amuse ourselves? 
What thoughts suggest our amusements and are sug- 
gested by them? Have we any conception of a moral 
discipline in these matters? The books we read, the plays 
we see, the conversations we take part in—what leads 
us to these, and what is the moral and spiritual reaction 
of them? “They do me no harm,” people say of im- 
moral books and plays. What they mean by “no harm,” 


28 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


is of course that they are not led by them to commit acts 
of sin. But they ignore the very nature of sin, that it 
is conceived in the heart, and that the consent to it there 
is the actual sin. And even supposing that we can be 
so in contact with that which abounds in evil suggestion 
and yet not ourselves sin, still by all principles of Chris- 
tian morals we are unwisely and unjustifiably exposing 
ourselves to moral risk, are skating on very thin ice 
indeed. There can be no guarantee that one who ex- 
poses himself to the risk of immoral suggestion, will 
not, probably far more often than he realises, give con- 
sent to and harbor immoral thought. 

It may be unhesitatingly asserted that our education 
ought to include a training in thought control and thought 
direction. Not only should education seek far more than 
it does to produce the powers of concentration, but it 
should seek to give the far more difficult capacity to 
select desirable fields of thought and to cultivate these 
when we are not aiming to master some subject intel- 
lectually. We should acquire early the power to turn 
away from that which is undesirable to that which is de- 
sirable. We should have in stock, if one may express 
it commercially, subjects that we have learned how to 
handle. For the adult the practice of meditation is of 
great help in this matter, and no doubt a careful Christian 
education should begin the practice early. The morn- 
ing’s meditation affords food for the day and enables us 
to bring wandering thoughts to heel. 

It may be objected that such rigid control as I seem 
to be suggesting would end by destroying all power of 
imagination, as the imagination needs free play for its 
development. But is that true? Certainly we recog- 


THE COLLECT FOR PURITY 29 


nize the enormous value of the imagination; but does its 
value consist chiefly, if indeed at all, in its being an un- 
disciplined imagination? The imagination as a mere in- 
tellectual tramp seems to me to be of as little value in 
the moral life as its physical counterpart is in society. 
The imagination to be fruitful must be disciplined. 
There are moments in life when immediate action is re- 
quired and when the imagination has to see the result 
of a given action and effectuate it. The soldier in battle, 
the locomotive engineer suddenly confronted with a 
burning bridge, the sailor sighting the wreck, the doctor 
at the crisis of his case, cannot stop to weigh pleasure and 
to weigh pain. The habitual discipline of their callings 
has developed in them an instinct of loyalty. They hear 
a voice without reply. They are led by a categorical de- 
mand which steadies their wills and to disobey which is 
moral recusancy. In other words, they are possessed of 
a trained imagination which in moments of crises en- 
ables them to visualize the situation, to grasp the mean- 
ing of the often varied details presented by the case and 
to bring them into a rapid synthesis and to meet the 
emergency. An imagination whose chief characteristic 
is vagrancy will be useless under the circumstances. The 
trained imagination, on the other hand, is an indispensable 
aid in the progress of knowledge, it is a traveller explor- 
ing an as yet unmapped territory. As Poincaré puts it: 
“Without principles that at any stage transcend precise 
confirmation through such experience as is then accessible, 
the organisation of experience is impossible.” This im- 
agination, which acts as a scout before the advancing 
hosts of the reason, which may well be compared to 
the aeroplane which soars above the unknown country to 


30 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


observe and report, may be called the creative imagina- 
tion, as it creates the hypothesis which the slow-plodding 
intellect will have in the future to test. 

It is the production of such a trained and directed 
imagination which we desiderate when we speak of a con- 
trol and direction of thought. The imagination will in 
some way act; the choice is between the controlled action 
and a merely vagrant and irresponsible action. It is the 
latter which is responsible for many sins of thought. It 
is this which saps the vitality of the will, rendering it 
flabby and impotent in the face of the call to action which 
deénergises our vision of the future, turning us to mere 
creations of dreams. We are deceived into mistaking 
romance for reality and seeing values when they do not 
exist. So a modern writer can say: “What you possess 
is not what you jangle in the pockets of your memory, 
but the imaginings with which you fill the spaces of the 
future.’ Day dreams are good, but only if they are 
filled with the energy which at least tries to transform 
them into realities. 

Let us get a little closer to the dangers of the imagina- 
tion in the matter of sins of thought. Often the imagina- 
tion is founded in past experience; it delights in recall- 
ing and revelling in the memory of past sin. In thought 
the same sin is committed over and over again when the 
circumstances are brought vividly before one and the 
will renews its consent. One is almost ready to say that 
the sin that is committed in imagination is worse than 
was the act that is recalled; and for the reason that the 
recalling is attended with a lingering delight in each de- 
tail, and a gloating over the past, an extracting a savour 
that very likely was not present when the sin was first 
committed. The imagination enriches and embroiders and 


THE COLLECT FOR PURITY 31 


extracts honey from all the minutie of this past. In 
much the same way the imagination can create what has 
not taken place; can set the stage in the future and cast 
its characters as it will. It can thus acquire a sustained 
and detailed pleasure for anticipated sin which will be im- 
possible in the actual performance. Often, indeed, there 
is no performance anticipated; the imagination furnishes . 
all the pleasure which is wanted. Realisation will, in fact, 
spoil what is essentially a work of art. 

The sources of sins of thought are manifold. The 
memory is one of the most fertile. We have just pointed 
out its danger. When the memory has become ac- 
customed to move in the past a very serious problem 
arises. Can we control memory? I think we can so far 
as to withhold consent, which is the important thing. For 
we have to remember in this connection that sins are in 
all cases acts of the will. Our consciousness is like a 
still pool of water over which shadows pass and play. 
The passing shadows in no wise disturb the serene quiet 
of the pool. But we are able to select from the chang- 
ing content of consciousness what at any time interests 
us. We sit in our tower like the Lady of Shalott and 
watch the passing show: 


Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, 
An abbot on an ambling pad, 
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad, 

Or long-haired page in crimson clad, 


but at last the moment comes when the interest is 
aroused and we say, “I am half sick of shadows,” and 
we are transformed from spectators into actors. The 
will seizes upon the interesting circumstance and we make 
ourselves over with it. But mental acts, whether spring- 


32 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


ing from memory of the past or from the anticipated fu- 
ture are mostly interior. There is another class of 
thoughts which spring from the exterior world. These 
grow out of our intercourse with our fellows, are reac- 
tions from other lives. Most of this external suggestion 
cannot be helped. There is much in life that is rough 
and coarse that is unavoidable, nor is it altogether to be 
desired that it should be avoided. This is a part of the 
training through discipline which is the divine ordering 
of life. Then there are other thoughts which seem to me 
quite obviously to spring from the suggestions of the 
Powers of Darkness. They are so malignant, so ob- 
viously from outside us, that we can only think of Satan 
as their instigator. Do not let any fear of the “modern 
mind” hold you back from such attribution of certain 
thoughts that you feel are wholly alien to your nature, 
are wholly unacceptable in their suggestions. We have 
explicit authority for sucha belief: “And during supper, 
the devil having now put it into the heart of Judas Is- 
cariot to betray him.” It must be maintained in such 
cases that the ground has been prepared, otherwise such 
thoughts could not find entrance; they may enter any- 
where at the holiest times and under the holiest circum- 
stances, witness the experience of all the saints; but 
unless the ground has been prepared they will be repelled 
with loathing. It is, perhaps, an evidence of the debased 
character of the Satanic mind, that it so often misjudges 
the effect of temptation; Satan imagines that what would 
be gratifying to him will be gratifying to the servant of 
God. 

While we need to guard life in a general way from 
such external temptations, we need also to remember 
that they cannot be wholly avoided and are a necessary 


THE COLLECT FOR PURITY 33 


part of our spiritual discipline. Spiritual thought is 
called out and perfected by the resistance to evil. There 
seems no other way of training. You cannot train an 
athlete by putting him in a library to read books on ath- 
letics, and no more can you train a spiritual athlete other- 
where than on the field of the spiritual combat. The 
prayer that we are taught to say, “Lead us not into temp- 
tation,” can only mean “expose us not to such temptations 
as are beyond our strength and training,’ and must be 
balanced by that other maxim of the spiritual life, “Count 
it all joy when you fall into divers temptations; know- 
ing this, that the trial of your faith worketh patience.” 
That is true of all sorts of trials, though S. James means 
it only of one. 

The power to resist temptation comes in great measure 
from the development of the virtues with which we are 
endowed as a consequence of our union with God. Vir- 
tues are powers, that is, they are potential energies ca- 
pable of being drawn into active service through exercise. 
Our constant weakness lies in the negative character of 
our conceptions of life. We are content if we avoid. 
But mere avoidance produces no strength. To try to re- 
sist each temptation as it comes, especially temptations of 
thought, is rather a hopeless business. What is needed is 
such positive preparation of the spiritual nature that the 
presented temptation makes no appeal. Such a spiritual 
state is attained by the development of our spiritual 
powers. If they are brought to a high state of develop- 
ment by the constant exercise of them they themselves are 
our shield and protection. It is rather a hopeless and dis- 
heartening business to try to resist thoughts of uncharity 
when they are presented to us: but the constant exercise 
of the virtue of charity prepares our souls so that the 


34 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


suggested thought makes no appeal. The soul which is 
effectively exercised in purity and peaceableness and 
kindness is abundantly protected from the opposite sins. 

We are but elaborating the teaching of our Lord’s 
parable of the cleansed house. There is small use in driv- 
ing out the devils if the house is to be left unoccupied. 
The devil can still look at it and call it “My house.” It 
is the new tenant which will effectively exclude the devil. 
It is the preoccupation of the spiritual nature with its 
positive work of growth which will render it heedless of 
the wandering thoughts that hang about its door and look 
in at its windows. The soul that can hang over its door 
the sign, “This is my busy day,” is the soul best pro- 
tected from intruders. But the idle soul simply offers 
itself as the prey of devils. 

All this may be stated as a realisation of the presence 
and acts of God in our souls, realised by us in acts of co- 
operation with Him. God is no longer a thought in our 
minds, a deduction of the reason from the phenomena 
of existence. He is the ever-present One to Whom we 
may turn at any moment; Who is there always, ready 
with His help in all our needs; ready to bear the weight 
of our sorrow, to solve the perplexity of our doubt, to 
supplement our waning strength, to guide our wandering 
feet. If any were to ask, “How do we gain this con- 
viction, out of what is this certainty born?’ I should 
answer, one attains this certainty of God’s Presence with 
one by using God. I am inclined to think that God is 
dim to many lives because they have never used Him. 
In theory they believe in a present God, but the theory 
leads to no practise; and a theory which leads to no 
practise is a useless theory. If I believe that God is with 
me I shall not wait for the Presence to be made known 


THE COLLECT FOR PURITY 35 


by some manifestation of God; I shall act on my belief. 
If I truly have faith, I shall act as though God were 
there; I shall order my life with reference to Him. My 
prayer will gain in vividness, [ shall act in confidence of 
His help. His Presence and cooperation will become a 
factor in all that I do. Thus my life will be stayed by 
the fact that it is not an independent life, but a life of .. 
cooperation with God. 

And this life which thus relies on God’s Presence and 
responds to it is the life which magnifies His Holy Name. 
This is our theory about our lives, the lives whose 
thoughts have been ordered and cleansed by the Presence 
in them of God the Holy Spirit. But we are challenged 
as to particulars. “How,” the world asks us, “do you 
magnify God’s Name?” And the world is quite right 
in demanding to see the results of our theory. We do 
not complain of that; but we have to confess that we ex- 
perience a little difficulty in answering. What the world 
wants to know is: “What difference has Christianity 
made? You speak of the Christian life as a proof and 
manifestation of the ever-present working of God; in 
what sense is this true of it?” The world goes on: “If 
you mean by Christianity the possession of certain be- 
liefs, I do not care about that. If you mean that you 
call yourself by certain names and receive certain sacra- 
ments, I do not care about that either: that is simply the 
uniform of your profession. What I want to know is 
what difference has come to pass in human life as a con- 
sequence of Christianity?” 

Now the difficulty that one experiences in replying to 
that challenge is not due to the fact that Christianity 
has made so little difference, but to the fact that it has 
made so much. Christianity has not been accepted by 


36 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the world, but it has so impressed itself upon the life 
and thought of Western civilization that the world has 
in great measure accepted its ideals and learned to think 
in terms of Christianity to such an extent that it has come 
to believe that those ideals belong to it quite apart from 
the religion which is their true source. The success of 
Christianity has been*so great in certain directions that it 
has destroyed its own evidential value; and men, finding 
themselves in the possession of certain ideals of character 
without Christian beliefs assume that the ideal grew up 
apart from the belief. The love of one’s neighbor, to 
take a single instance, the conviction that we are respon- 
sible for our brother men, which underlies all modern 
social philosophy and is evidenced in our developing 
humanitarian legislation and the growing sense of so- 
clety’s responsibility for the welfare of all its members, 
is due entirely to the Christian conception of God. And 
just because it has impressed itself so completely upon 
the world Christianity has lost the credit of it. 

But although our evidence has been weakened for the 
world by this process, it retains all its force for those 
who can see the facts in their true light. It is over- 
whelming proof of the possibility of human life reflect- 
ing the God Who has entered into communion with it. 
And there is this curious outcome: that humanity’s suc- 
cess in knowing the mind of God in relation to the world 
has thereby raised the standard by which we are judged. 
The degree in which we must be godlike to justify our 
religion and to magnify God’s Holy Name increases with 
our success in so doing. We come to see what the mind 
of God contains as more and more we translate it into 
human experience. We use the old words, but their 
perceived content becomes greater; we live the old life, 


THE COLLECT FOR PURITY 37 


but its experience becomes deeper. As we experience 
God more, our thought of Him is purified and intensified. 
As we go deeper into the meaning of words like purity 
and righteousness and justice, we go deeper into God. 

These thoughts may seem remote from the meaning of 
the collect of which the obvious significance 1s to prepare 
us for participation in the Holy Mysteries; but the con- 
nection is there. In the Holy Eucharist we are approach- 
ing God. What I have been trying to do is to define that 
relation in such wise that we may intelligently act upon 
it; so to unfold the relation that we may see all that it 
implies, and understand it as touching all life. It is one 
thing,—and I may say a very inadequate thing,—to ap- 
proach God with the vague notions of His Divinity as 
the sole content of our minds; and quite another thing 
to approach Him as One with Whom we are in living 
and active intercourse at all times; as One we have per- 
sonally experienced to be our Saviour; as One Whose 
Presence makes itself known in all our activity. If this 
is our thought of God then we may well pray that the 
thoughts of our hearts may be cleansed, and our souls 
kindled to adoration, as we enter the Sacramental Pres- 
ence and in union with the Incarnate Son offer ourselves 
to Him anew. 


| 
by 


pal 
Wig 
Oe ; 


wi 





THE THIRD MEDITATION 
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 


The Ten Commandments made their first appearance in 
the English Mass in the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. 
That book forms the low-water mark in Anglican liturgical 
history. It was the furthest departure from Catholic tradi- 
tion and the nearest approach to outright Protestantism. 
Each revision of the Prayer Book which has followed has 
been in the nature of a restoration, giving back to us more 
or less of the Catholic features of which the Second Book 
deprived us,—steps backward toward the First Book, which, 
in turn, was the closest approximation to the old Latin Mass. 
The introduction of the Ten Commandments was typical of 
the efforts of the more Protestant “reformers” and _ illus- 
trates their whole tendency, which was in the direction of 
substituting an edifying memorial for the great Catholic 
liturgical act,—the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, the re- 
presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary. Their use in the 
midst of the Mass is without liturgical precedent, and they 
are now generally omitted or rehearsed in a shortened form. 
It is no disparagement of their value, or of the place they 
occupy in the history of God’s revelation of the moral law, 
to say that they are quite out of place as a part of the 
Christian’s most solemn act of worship. Doubtless our con- 
gregations need to be reminded of the moral law. But there 
is really a touch of the ludicrous in the picture of the in- 
structed and devout communicants, who make up the ma- 
jority of those who assist at Mass, and especially of those 
who assist regularly ahd frequently, being day after day 
exhorted not to steal or commit murder, or reminded that 
there is but one God. 


Let us listen to the words of the Psalm: 


Make thou thy servant to delight in that which is good. 


Let us picture to ourselves: 


HE giving of the Law on Mount Sinai, as it is 
© described in the Book of Exodus. The camp of 
Israel is spread out in the plain before the mountain. 
This is their first complete rest since they have escaped 
from Egypt. Moses has led them here that they may be 
taught of God. The mountain rises sheer above their 
camp, its summit lost in the clouds. Up there, where the 
storm is playing about the mountain peak, amid the flash- 
ing of the lightning and the crash of the thunder, is 
their great leader, in communion with God. It is not, 
perhaps, the first time that Moses has met God there. 
During the years of his exile in Midian God had revealed 
Himself to him. Now Moses is seeking from God the 
knowledge and the wisdom which shall fit him to lead 
God’s people to the land that He has promised them. 
Picture the people, awe-struck at the convulsion of na- 
ture which is to them the symbol of the Presence and 
Majesty of God. Ever after they will think of the 
storm as the manifestation of the divine power. ‘The 
voice of Thy thunder was heard round about: the light- 
nings shone upon the ground; the earth was moved and 
shook withal.” Up there in the heart of the storm-cloud 
Moses is listening for the voice of God; not a voice that 
will shake the mountain, but a voice that will make itself 

Al 


42 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


heard in the depths of his consciousness. There will be 
no doubt that the thoughts that are formed there will 
be a reflection of the thought of God. The law that he 
will bring to Israel will be a law of righteousness, embody- 
ing for men so much of the divine holiness as man is 
now able to appreciate. Hear the voice of the thunder 
that announces the divine Presence. See the people fall 
prostrate in worship. 


Consider, first, 


That the essence of the revelation of God given through 
Moses is that God is an Holy God. The God who had 
wonderfully delivered His people was not like the gods of 
the heathen. He is a God with a moral character. It 
has very far-reaching implications—this revelation of the 
holiness of. God. It sets a standard for human life. 
Man must be like his God. God reveals Himself in terms 
of human thought in order that humanity may know the 
kind of life that is pleasing to God. God-likeness is 
henceforth to be the one allowable ideal of human char- 
acter. The revelation of God given at Sinai is the rev- 
elation of God as interested in human life: it is a step on 
toward that revelation of the supreme interest of God in 
man which is made in the Incarnation. The point is, 
not that God wants to impose a certain kind of conduct 
which is represented by rules; but that by the revelation 
of Himself He wishes to draw man to a perception of the 
beauty of the divine character, and to seek it in his own 
experience. He wishes man to see the beauty of holiness 
and to conceive its possibility for himself. Man is not 
to keep a law because he fancies that God likes a special 
set of rules: he is to keep this law because through the 
keeping of it he will be morally purified and led to the 


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 43 


perception of righteousness. The law is a first and lowly 
stage in man’s advance to the perception of what holiness 
means; but it is a necessary stage. It is a great step to 
understand that God is interested that man shall be like 
Him, and that it is through this likeness that man shall 
ultimately find access to God. 


Consider, second, 


Have you grasped in your experience, this fact that 
understanding of God is through likeness to Him? That 
the importance of conduct is that it clears the mind and 
spirit for the appreciation of the character of God? 
God’s laws are not arbitrary; they are principles, the 
steady action upon which leads to spiritual illumination. 
Have you understood that the following of the rules of 
Christian living is the means of producing in you the 
kind of character that can understand God? Our un- 
derstanding of God is conditioned on our likeness to Him. 
The cultivation of the principles of beauty reveals to us the 
secret of the great artists. Through it we come to know 
the mind of a Titian, a Wordsworth, a Wagner. In 
the same way the cultivation of the qualities of justice, 
of mercy, of purity, make known to us the secret of God. 
Let us ask ourselves what stress we are laying upon the 
cultivation of the qualities which reveal God. Am [I still 
in that low moral stage which thinks of the law of God 
as a set of arbitrary rules, more or less vexatious, which 
one follows because one respects the will of God? 


Let us pray, then, 


To see the mind of God in His law. Let us pray for 
insight into the law of God. Let us pray, “Open thou 


44 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


mine eyes: that I may see the wondrous things of thy 
law.” 

Show the light of Thy countenance upon us, O Lord, 
that the going forth of Thy word may give light and un- 
derstanding, to nourish the hearts of the simple; and that 
while our desire is set on Thy commandments, we may 
receive with open hearts the Spirit of Wisdom and 
understanding. 

O God, the strength of all those who put their trust in 
Thee; Mercifully accept our prayers; and_ because, 
through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no 
good thing without Thee, grant us the help of Thy grace, 
that in keeping Thy commandments as we may please Thee 
both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 


In some respects the emphasis upon the Ten Command- 
ments which results from their recitations in the 
Communion Office has been unfortunate, as I will in- 
dicate in a moment. But notwithstanding the obvious 
limitations of the Commandments as a statement of 
Christian morality, one cannot but feel that there is a 
certain good to be gotten from this solemn proclama- 
tion of the need of a right moral state in those who would 
approach God. It seems as though the advance of society 
in moral achievement is more slow than along other lines— 
so slow that one is sometimes driven to doubt whether 
religion is conceived by the majority of people as im- 
plying moral standards at all. No doubt every age has 
moral standards of some sort; but at best they are only 
partially those of the Gospel. Even people, otherwise 
very good, seem to suffer from an inexplicable moral 


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 45 


blindness when it is a question of their own personal ac- 
tion, and especially is this the case if such action is of 
a public or social nature. We easily permit ourselves 
low standards of conduct in cases where our responsibil- 
ity is not direct, but only results from our membership in 
society. We do not feel our responsibility for social 
evils, which nevertheless are the worst evils with which 
we have to deal. 


One is even tempted to say that the more important 
part of our moral responsibility is social. There is a 
responsibility upon us to protest against anything and 
everything which tends to lower the morals of our nation; 
and we do not escape that responsibility by simply hold- 
ing up our hands and exclaiming, “What can I do?” 
We can at any rate be informed and ready for efficient 
protest when the opportunity presents itself. There are 
certain evils that cannot exist in the face of the protest 
of a fairly united community. The moral degradation, 
the poverty, the crime, the sin that are implied in the 
continuance of the liquor traffic nothwithstanding the 
prohibitory laws could easily be done away by the mere 
moral power of such a protest. A public with an 
aroused conscience could easily put an end to the moral 
and physical degeneracy that is implied in the continued 
existence of Child-labour. A Christian dealing with the 
problems of girl life would do much in a generation to 
lessen the horrors of prostitution. These and the like 
evils exist because the community is not moralised; and 
the community is not moralised because we take a 
private and personal, that is, a narrowly individual, 
view of morals; because we consider that we are 
moral if we refrain from immoral actions ourselves— 


46 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


if we abstain from obvious violation of the law of God 
in our own person. 

Now it seems to me that, in view of these facts, some 
sort of proclamation of moral law is needed; but that the 
insistence upon the Ten Commandments is apt to in- 
cline us to an individual view of morality and to a nega- 
tive conception of the nature of moral obligation. As the 
Ten Commandments are the moral protest that we have 
at present available, let us by all means make the best of 
them: but let us also remember that the Ten Command- 
ments are not an adequate expression of Christian moral- 
ity. In the first place they are the undeveloped morality 
of a nation in a low stage of civilization: and in the 
second, we have the later ideals of the Gospel by which 
to guide and judge our lives. God’s laws are given with 
reference to the moral state of those to whom they are 
proclaimed. Their intention is to form moral character, 
and that when formed, should progress beyond the stage 
that was contemplated by the law. Any set of rules 
ought, in the very nature of the case, to become obsolete. 
That they do not, as a matter of fact, indicates the moral 
backwardness of those whose rules they have for a long 
time been. The rules remain operative because of the 
numbers of people who fail to respond to them and to 
pass beyond them. Moral advance means the passage to 
a sphere in which the rule has ceased, not to be true, but 
to be applicable. If it becomes applicable there is moral 
lapse, and the rule is once more binding. The living by 
the rules of honesty should so form moral character that 
it should outgrow them. But if one who has ceased to 
feel the application of the law, “Thou shalt not steal,” 
falls back to the lower level where that law applies it at 
once presses upon the life. It is only the impure that 


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 47 


come under the pressure of the law of purity. But if one 
looks to any set of rules as being a final piece of legis- 
lation, and an adequate expression of the moral life, one 
is likely to keep the rules and make no moral advance. 

And this is especially disastrous if the rule taken for 
the guidance of life, is, like the Ten Commandments, 
negative. There is a stage in moral development in 
which negative rules most effectively impress the will 
of God. But it cannot be a permanent stage. It was 
the moral stage of the Israelites at the time of the giving 
of the Law; but it is not ours. We have passed beyond 
the stage of moral knowledge, and ought to have passed 
beyond the stage of moral development, in which a nega- 
tive morality can be useful to us, to a stage in which, in 
fact, it is deadening. Any Christian who is trying to 
conduct life on a negative basis is missing the point of 
Christian morality altogether. And inasmuch as the 
constant reiteration of the Ten Commandments to Chris- 
tian congregations seems to me to encourage the view 
that negative moral ideals are sufficient; that we are 
still sufficiently provided for morally by a set of rules; 
I believe that it would be better to sacrifice whatever is 
gained by the public assertion of a moral standard in the 
Communion Office, in order to prevent the dangerous 
inference that a negative attitude toward duty is sufficient 
for Christians. 

The moral standards that are to guide the lives of 
Christians to-day must be gathered from the life and 
teaching of our Lord. What we derive from that teach- 
ing is not a set of rules, but ideals and principles which 
must underlie the life of the Christian, and by which 
that life must be guided. It is quite true that many 


48 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


stitute ideals and principles for rules; and therefore it 
remains that the rules still have a kind of use, to which 
I will revert later. But for the present let us think of 
life as guided by principle. 

We study the life and words of our Lord in order 
to gather direction in the conduct of our own lives. 
But our Lord’s method of teaching was a peculiar one: 
He apparently did not think of His teaching as establish- 
ing rules of conduct. He seems to have assumed the 
existence of the ordinary moral standards of the time and 
not to have felt it needful to interfere with them. His 
effort was to lift His followers to a higher plane of 
living where new motives would operate in the produc- 
tion of new results: where human life, having perceived 
some new principle of action, would work it out under its 
own circumstances. It is only to this result of the 
operation of a living and formative principle in life that 
He seems to attach much importance. One result of 
such moral movement, it appears, would be to purify the 
existing morality which was in danger of becoming mere 
convention and sham. He lays down no rule of fasting, 
for example, but He assumes the ordinary performance 
of the duty, and at the same time provides of its purifica- 
tion and elevation to the level of a truly religious act: 
“When ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad 
countenance—But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy 
head, and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men 
to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy 
Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.” 

I think that we shall find that uniformly to be the 
effect of our Lord’s teaching—to purify conduct by re- 
moving it from its customary base in rules, to the higher 
level of principle. Hence that interpretation of the 


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 49 


Sermon on the Mount that finds in it a set of rules of a 
new and more strict nature, seems to me very far afield. 
Men still perplex themselves over the possibility of keep- 
ing such a “rule” as: ‘Whosoever shall smite thee on 
thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Surely the 
difficulty of keeping such a rule were much less than the 
difficulty of understanding it as a rule at all. Asa rule, 
the most noteworthy thing about it would be the narrow- 
ness of its application to the facts of life. It is a rule, 
I venture to think, that most of us have little chance of 
applying later than our school days. But as a concrete 
instance of a principle stated in the extreme case it be- 
comes an invaluable guide to conduct. Our Lord’s 
method is not to lay down a principle and leave us to 
deduce instances of its application; He instances an ex- 
treme case under the principle and leaves us to deduce 
the principle from that. Studied from that point of view 
the Sermon on the Mount becomes, not a collection of 
bizarre rules, but a collection of illustrations of principles 
capable of fruitful application in every life. 

This method of principle becomes clearer when we 
study it in the Beatitudes. It there appears as the com- 
mendation of certain states of soul. Primarily, I should 
say, they are states of aspiration. The Christian is con- 
ceived as longing for the ideal as the means of his self- 
expression. Certain qualities are blessed because they 
are the expression of a certain type of character. The 
poor in spirit and the pure, the meek and the peaceful, 
are of a certain spiritual quality—the quality indicative 
of a life in harmony with God. 

And that, perhaps, indicates the inner meaning of our 
Lord’s teaching. He Himself is the revelation of God. 
Glimpses of the mind and character of God had come to 


50 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


man, both through the study of the natural world, and 
through preceeding revelation. Butin Jesus God stands re- 
vealed so far as revelation of God to humanity is essential. 
God’s character and His attitude toward humanity are 
translated for us in the life of Jesus; and they are trans- 
lated for us in order that we may form ourselves upon 
that model. The value of the principles that He enun- 
ciates through His teaching is that the application of them 
to human life will transform that life and make it like the 
life of Jesus. We cannot attain to that likeness by fol- 
lowing rules of conduct, but only by assimilating to our 
life the principles of His life. 

There is something pathetic in the negative method, by 
which one attempts to acquire qualities by the way of 
abstention: to acquire, for example, the quality of peace- 
ableness by abstention from acts of violence. There is 
something helplessly inadequate in the method by which 
one attempts to acquire a quality by the exercise of 
particular instances of it. That is the quite hopeless 
method of a certain type of spiritual book which bids 
us practise acts of humility as the means of becom- 
ing humble. Unless the act is the spontaneous flower- 
ing of the quality, one fails to see how it is humility at 
all. 

I trust that I have said enough to indicate that Chris- 
tian morality is quite a different thing from the keeping 
of the Ten Commandments. Its key-note is found in 
that saying of S. Paul: “Let this mind be in you which 
is also in Christ Jesus. The mind of Christ, which is the 
mind of God; that is our aim.” This mind becomes 
ours, potentially, by virtue of our indwelling in Christ. 
As we are taken up into Him and share His life, the 
power to reflect that life in our own living becomes ours. 


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS co 


It becomes ours actually as the devout study of the life 
of our Lord enables us to gain from Him understanding 
of His method in dealing with life. Abstract principles 
and ideals are understood as we see them embodied in 
His experience. If I have given myself to Him and 
made my will one with His will the effect will be that my 
life will become like His life. Under my own different 
circumstances I shall reflect to the world the life of my 
Master. 

This emphasises, does it not, the need of devout study 
of the life of Jesus? Would that our Gospels might be- 
come the indispensable companions of our day. What 
we need is not the cursory familiarity with the events of 
our Lord’s life which come of frequent reading; but we 
need that He shall speak to us through His life in words 
that are spiritually understood. We need to get rid 
of the sense of distance, and let Him speak to us as He 
spoke to His disciples. What no doubt influenced them 
more than any words that He spoke was the influence of 
His living presence. That living presence is to-day be- 
hind the written word; it is the presence of one with 
whom we are united. Let Jesus speak to you out of the 
pages of His life; as you brood over that life the word 
will come speaking in your souls in tones that the soul 
will understand; and there will be formed in you the 
mind of Jesus, and you will understand the problems of 
your life in the light of His life. 

“But,” you will say, “true as that is and valuable as 
I have found it in my experience to interpret life in the 
light of the life of Jesus: illuminating as the principles 
drawn from His life and words undoubtedly are, it still 
seems that there are problems of conduct that have to be 
decided by the current rules of morality. It still re- 


52 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


mains that most lives find themselves struggling on the 
level of that moral action where the Ten Commandments, 
or at least some of them, apply. Granted my good in- 
tentions and even my earnest efforts, I still do not 
wholly escape to that high level of the Christ-life. Do 
you mean that ordinary conduct, if it be not solved in 
the light of Christ’s life, is then to resort to the standard 
of the Commandments? In short, what is the relation 
between customary morality, with its rules of conduct, 
and Christian morality which is the life of Christ in us?” 

This is a legitimate and an important question. And 
we ought to get clear to ourselves at the outset that 
human morality is a matter of natural evolution. There 
has never been a revealed code of morals; but rules of 
conduct have grown up in the course of the evolution of 
the race and reflect the experience of the race. Things 
to be done or avoided, customs to be kept, actions to be 
observed, are the outcome of humanity’s experience of 
what is on the whole best for it. The Ten Command- 
ments were not the enactment of a new set of moral 
rules; they embody the old customary morality of the 
Semitic peoples. Men did not first learn, in the time of 
Moses, that it is wrong to lie and steal and kill. What 
the Mosaic legislation did was to put upon certain moral 
principles of the people of Israel the authoritative stamp 
of the divine approval. Henceforth Israel was not to 
regard its moral laws as merely customary, but as also 
representative of the divine will. God had revealed Him- 
self to them as an holy God and chosen them to be an 
holy people; and for the time being, and relatively to 
their moral state, their holiness was best conceived as 
apartness from evil. 


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 53 


But still it underlay the conception of life that was 
proposed to Israel in the Mosaic revelation that es- 
sentially holiness is likeness to God. The ideal was “‘be 
ye holy, for I am holy.” It was the business of religion 
to work out this conception to its full expression in the 
formation of a life that has godlikeness ; that is holy, 
not by separation from evil, but by participation in God. 
That is, religious action upon morality is not chiefly to 
change custom, but to give custom a new sanction and to 
transform its meaning. Morality, under the action of re- 
ligion, ceases to be mere inherited custom and becomes an 
expression of the will of God. The meaning of ob- 
servance 1s that now through it character is purified and 
strengthened and assimilated to the character of God: 
but it is this by virtue of its intended obedience to the 
will of God through men’s purpose to live as the children 
of God. The negative character of the morality of 
Israel, and of much of our common morality which is 
derived from it, has, therefore, a practical side. Its ab- 
stinence must be understood as implying a positive view 
of God. Because God is holy His nature is alien from all 
evil. Or, to put it the other way, that which is alien from 
the mind of God we conceive as evil, and therefore ab- 
stain from it as destructive of godlikeness in us. 

There is still therefore a need of rules. Christianity 
did not dispense with them: it gave them rather an added 
emphasis because it made known more clearly the char- 
acter of God. Aloofness from all that is contrary to the 
will of God is fundamental to the Christian conception 
of character. We still need to examine ourselves as to 
our violations of God’s law. But in the unfolding of 
the character of God through the human life of our 


54 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Lord new elements of holiness have come into evidence, 
or old elements have received new emphasis. Godlike- 
ness has now become a thoroughly positive conception: 
we understand it as the character that is formed by the 
assimilation of the principles that underly our Lord’s 
life. The stress of our self-examination ought to fall on 
our success or failure in this latter work. 

The suggestion of the Ten Commandments in the 
Communion Office is that of the need of some standard 
by which to examine our lives with a view of determin- 
ing our state before God. Their use to earnest Chris- 
tians lies in this suggestiveness. Evidently they do not 
themselves supply this required standard. The best that 
can be said of them is that they do embody the germ- 
principles of universal morality: they are moral hints that 
are capable of indefinite expansion. The content of the 
commandment, “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have 
no other Gods but me,’ expands as our knowledge of 
God expands, until it comes to include the evangelical 
conception of God. And so of the others: an adequate 
expansion of them will cover the moral field, positive 
and negative. And they are useful to us only as ex- 
panded; our examination by them can only be based 
upon them not limited to them. They can be used as 
centers about which to group the knowledge of Chris- 
tian obligation derived from the life and teaching of 
our Lord. This work is that attempted, and accom- 
plished with more or less adequacy, in the current man- 
uals for self-examination before confession and Com- 
munion. 

Such manuals have their use; but I must say that it 
seems to me a use chiefly for children and other mechan- 
ically-minded persons, and for new beginners in the diffi- 


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 55 


cult art of self-knowledge. Earnest Christians ought to 
dispense with them as anything more than rough guides. 
What we need is expertness in the comparison of our 
lives with their ideals, and in the observance of how far 
our lives are embodying the principles by which we claim 
to live. There is but one way to do this; and that is 
by the constant reference of our lives to our Lord’s life. 
He is the one example and standard, and we must not 
allow our eye to wander from Him. The ever-present 
danger of the Christian is the danger of the low standard ; 
of contentedly resting in the conventional morality of 
our time. That is predominately an exterior morality 
for the social purposes of life. It is the embodiment of 
human experience as to what is most serviceable in the 
present conditions of society. It is not at all adequate 
for purposes of spiritual advance. malar Ted an\ it 
means spiritual stagnation. 

And it seems to me that in our approach to our Lord 
in our Communions we need a broader outlook on our 
lives than is implied in the self-examination in regard to 
sin which is the preliminary to confession. The ques- 
tion, Are we ready to receive the Bread of God, is not 
adequately answered by the reply, I am not in a state 
of moral sin. My approach to my Lord ought to imply 
eager desire and earnest aspiration. It implies, as I 
pointed out in the first of these meditations, the expect- 
ance of results. It implies, therefore, the kind of self- 
examination which shall reveal my progress in Christ- 
likeness ; the judgment of my life in the light of its op- 
portunities and possibilities of achievement. I need to 
determine, not only what I have done or left undone, 
which is the limit of ordinary self-examination ; but what 
I presently am. I can only know that as I compare my- 


56 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


self with my ideals of the Christian life, as I seek knowl- 
edge of that life in the life of my Redeemer. 

This, no doubt, seems a tremendously difficult thing. 
It is much easier to determine whether I have been need- 
lessly absent from worship, or have told a lie, than to 
determine my deficiency in the qualities of mercy and 
charity. It is also much easier to repent of the former 
than to correct the latter. But we shall agree, when it 
is put in this concrete way, that to correct the qualities 
is fully as important as to repent of the sins. The sins 
need not represent anything permanent in my character; 
the deficiency in the qualities certainly does. “But 
how,’ you will ask me, “am I to deal with the de- 
ficiency?” That question brings us face to face with the 
central problem of Christian living. 

Let me say once more—though I have said it so many 
times—that we shall succeed in proportion as we yield 
ourselves to the influence of our Lord. Let me also say 
again that this is so because that life is not a record of 
the past but an experience of Jesus that is now possible 
for us. Our Lord’s life is energetic; power still goes 
out from Him. His mercy and charity and purity are 
communicable, and are communicated to those who are in 
union with Him. We have not to build up those qual- 
ities in ourselves by a laborious process, by a series of 
difficult acts. We have only to desire them and to 
yield ourselves to His action. Learn what charity is in 
our Lord. Watch it in His life. Study it in its various 
manifestations. See how He deals with human souls; 
His kindliness with the Paralytic; His sympathy with the 
Magdalen; His patience with the woman of Samaria; 
His mercy with the woman taken in adultery. Let the 
influence of this action of our Lord become plain to 


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 57 


you. Learn to understand it as an expression of God’s 
attitude toward us, as a revelation of the character of 
God, and it cannot fail that you will admire it and long 
for it. You will long to be like Him in His attitude 
toward others. And the longing will be answered; you 
will find it easier to deal with others; to sympathise, to 
be patient, to show mercy, to make allowances. You 
will find that it is no longer hard to do these things; 
that there has come to you, not so much the power of 
doing them, as a joy in them that makes them natural 
and easy for you. 

And as it is with this quality, so with others. Ap- 
preciation will lead to desire, and desire to attainment. 
Truth and purity and peacefulness will be born. And 
with them will be born a new joy in living. I find my- 
self the center of a new influence; life becomes the ex- 
Perencen or ae new! force. so) “wake? to’ the truth johns: 
Paul’s saying, “It is not I that live, but Christ that liveth 
in me.’ That is what Christian living ultimately means 
—a life possessed by Christ, and used by Him as the 
means of His self-expression to the world. That is what 
every Christian ought to be—an expression of Christ’s 
life, a living evidence of the new power that cometh from 
Him. It is remote, is it not, from our hard labour of 
keeping rules? From our present anxiety about com- 
mandments? From our labour under the yoke of the 
Law? Yes; it is the freedom of the Christian, the free- 
dom that he has won by the surrender of his life that he 
may receive it again, his freedom joyfully to serve, and 
serving to gain the perfection of his own life in union 
with the life of Christ Whose he is. 


u 
a 


3 Raney he Rate ae ee 
¥ Hy, . ey .y 


ry Li 


id he 
Oe Ay. 
8 Riles ¥ 


Bae aca 





THE FOURTH MEDITATION 
THE SUMMARY OF THE LAW 


Our Lord’s Summary of the Law was introduced into our 
Mass from the Prayer Book of Scotland. Its source is, of 
course, Matt. xxii, 37—40. 

What we know as a low Mass is a Western medizval de- 
velopment, unknown to this day in the Eastern church. Until 
the middle ages High Mass, that is, Mass celebrated with 
the assistant ministers and music and incense, was the norm, 
as it still is in the East. Our Low Mass is a curtailed sub- 
stitute, and many of its details are puzzling unless one re- 
members this. The Introit, which begins the Mass proper 
and is its first variable feature, is simply the processional 
psalm sung by the choir while the celebrant and his assistants 
are entering, thus relieving the gloomy effect produced by a 
company marching silence. Such is its origin. But it soon 
won its position in the liturgy and when the Low Mass with- 
out choir was evolved the Introit came to be said by the 
celebrant, as it now is even at High Mass though sung by 
the choir. It consists of an antiphon or introductory verse, 
the verse of a psalm, the Gloria Patri (except on such 
mournful occasions as requiems and in the masses of 
Passiontide) and then the antiphon repeated. The antiphon 
is very often taken from the same psalm as the verse which 
follows, but it is not invariably from Holy Scripture. The 
pertinence of the matter selected for the Introit, particularly 
to be noted in the feast day and votive masses, is evidence 
of the completeness with which our forefathers knew their 
Bible. Just as the psalms and canticles (for instance 
Miserere, Magnificat, and so forth) came to be referred to 
by their initial words, so each mass came to be known by 
the first word of its Introit, which explains such terms as 
Requiem Mass and Letare Sunday. Introits were retained 
in the First Prayer Book and their reintroduction is advo- 
cated in some of the present revision projects. Many of 
them are given in the “English Hymnal.’ No altar book 
which omits them is complete. 


Let us listen to the words of the Gospel: 


And he entered into one of the ships, which was 
Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a 
little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the 
people of the ship. 


Let us picture to ourselves: 


HIS scene by the shore of the lake of Gennesaret. 
© It was like many scenes in our Lord’s life. He 
was always teaching the people wheresoever He could 
gather them. There is a great crowd here this 
morning, eagerly pressing to get near the wonderful 
Teacher. They do not want to lose any word that He 
speaks. But the pressure of the crowd defeats its own 
end; so great is the confusion that it is impossible for 
our Lord to teach them at all. So He gets into Simon’s 
boat and pushes off a little from the land. The scene 
easily comes to us in all its essential elements. There is 
the blue surface of the lake broken by silver wavelets 
that flash ceaselessly in the intense sunlight. There are 
the fishing-boats along the shore; the fishermen, inter- 
rupted in their work, are gone out of them and are 
mingled among the crowd. The hills slope back from the 
shore where the many coloured Oriental crowd presses 
eagerly to the edge of the water. And in Simon’s boat 
Jesus himself is standing, and the people gradually hush 
themselves into silence as He begins to speak. One 
pictures to oneself, above all, Simon, in whose life this 

61 


62 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


day is to be critical. How intently he listens; with what 
growing conviction of the truth of the words spoken; 
with what overpowering sense of the attractiveness of 
the man who is teaching out of his boat. When the day 
ends he will have forsaken all to follow him. See the 
faces of the crowd as they listen. On this man’s face 
there is a deepening shadow which is the reflection of 
his sinfulness now becoming clear to him. On that man’s 
there is the radiance of a new hope. 


Consider, first, 


That He who is speaking thus from Simon’s boat is 
no ordinary teacher. He is not a philosopher with a new 
theory of the world. He is not a Scribe explaining the 
Law. He is not, what the Hebrew people might very 
well expect, a new prophet, come after the silence of 
centuries, to resume the old method of God’s guidance 
of Israel, a prophet with a burning message from God 
whose words should once more announce their authority: 
“Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts.” He that teaches out 
of Simon’s boat is God Himself. Let us permit that fact 
to sink into our minds for a moment. Jesus is God. 
His words are the words of God. His teaching is not 
human teaching about God; it is God’s revelation of Him- 
self. Our first thought—and unfortunately it is often 
the last thought—is to recoil from the wonder of it— 
God in a man’s boat! But rather would not the wonder 
be if it were not so? What kind of a God is it in whom 
we believe? Where should we expect Him to reveal 
Himself if not in the intimacies of human life? “There- 
fore will the Lord wait that He may be gracious unto you, 
and therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy 


THE SUMMARY OF THE LAW 63 


upon you—thou shalt weep no more; He will be very 
gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when He shall 
hear it He will answer thee.’ Yes; no doubt, one be- 
lieves that, but it does not touch one very much. ‘Where 
two or three are gathered together in my name there am 
I in the midst of them.” One understands that; that is 
what one would expect of God. The more one lets one’s 
thoughts rest on Jesus the more inevitable He is, if 
there be a God at all. The God who does not teach in 
men’s boats and go to their marriage feasts and sit at 
their tables and stand beside the graves of their dead 
becomes more and more inconceivable to one. One feels 
that it is through the Incarnation that one reaches God: 
that without that God would always be in danger of be- 
coming a name to one. The Old Testament teaching 
about God is believable because it looks forward to and 
issues in his Incarnation, 


Consider, second, 


Whether you have achieved such intimacy with God 
that you find His presence in your life natural. Do you 
expect to have your life so controlled by the teaching 
of Jesus that His presence is manifest there? ‘‘The words 
that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life.” 
The words of Jesus interpret us to ourselves. We are 
‘so apt to judge our lives by the standards of other 
teachers or by our own interpretation of life. But we 
have understood the meaning of life only when we have 
it explained to us by Jesus. Let us ask ourselves whether 
we are very ready to have our lives so explained to us? 
When we adopt a certain line of conduct, when we de- 
termine to perform this or that act, what is it that is 


64 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


determining us? One can think of a good many things 
that might determine one: one’s desire for success or 
comfort or happiness. But that one’s conduct is in ac- 
cord with the teaching of Jesus? Look back on the 
last month; you have had some things to decide during 
that time. What has guided your choice? It is through 
choosing that we come to know. Our Lord’s words fall 
on the ears as idle sounds when there is not the constant 
exercise of a choice that makes them our own. We must 
listen with the purpose of obeying: to have heard day 
after day the truth with neither purpose nor attempt 
of obedience is to harden the heart so that we cannot 
understand. The understanding is reached through the 
heart. Have you learned to love the words of Jesus so 
that you have come to read them with a sense of their 
having been spoken to you: lingering upon them as words 
of personal guidance, going back to them again and again 
and at each recurrence finding new meanings in the 
inexhaustible fulness of the words of God? Has the 
Gospel become thus personal to you? Have you learned 
through it to be intimate with your God? 


Let us pray, 


That our Lord will make Himself personally known to 
us through His words so that we may find them words 
spoken to us. Pray to find in His words the revelation 
of your own life. 

O Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting 
life; Grant us perfectly to know Thy Son Jesus Christ to 
be the way, the truth, and the life; that, following the 
steps of Thy holy Apostles, we may steadfastly walk in 
the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same Thy 
Son Jesus Christ our Lord. 


THE SUMMARY OF THE LAW 65 


THE SUMMARY OF THE LAW 


No doubt, the Summary of the Law, following as it 
does the Ten Commandments, is intended to emphasise 
the fact that the religion of the Old and New Testaments 
is one. This is, indeed, a fact worth emphasising. 
There is a feeling abroad that we may safely disregard ': 
the Old Testament as a distinctly inferior book—a book 
having, it may be, a certain historical or archeological 
value, but as a book of spiritual teaching superseded by 
the New Testament. It is perhaps true that all the teach- 
ing that we actually need for the guidance of our lives 
can be gathered from the pages of the New Testament ; 
but it is not therefore true that the Old Testament is 
unimportant, and that we lose nothing by ignoring it. 
We lose for one thing, and it is the only thing that I am 
concerned with now, the keen sense of the divine pur- 
pose running through the history of the race, and issuing 
in the Revelation made in the Gospel. That Revelation 
was the fulfilment of what had gone before it; it was the 
further unfolding of the truths contained in the pages of 
the prophets and Psalmists. There was a new element 
in the teaching of Jesus as there must always be in the 
teaching which is an advance on that which has gone 
before. But the new element harmonised perfectly with 
the old; it was an advance on the same line that the re- 
ligion of Israel had been following; it was a new de- 
parture, not a new beginning; it consisted much more 
in showing what was implied in the religion of the Old 
Testament, than in the setting forth of truths hitherto 
unknown. 

Indeed, after one believes in God, all else in religion 
must be the unfolding of this belief and the apprecia- 


66 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


tion of it in detail. Religions are false in so far as they 
present wrong notions about God, and wrong deductions 
from true notions. The element of falsity in the Jewish 
religion contemporaneous with our Lord was due to 
wrong inferences about God. What the Psalmist had said 
of the wicked, was true of many of our Lord’s con- 
temporaries,—they thought that God was even such a 
one as themselves, and they made the appropriate de- 
ductions in the teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees. 
The revelation that our Lord made was intended to re- 
call men first of all to a true thought about God. In so 
doing there was no need to contradict or set aside the 
Old Testament; there was need to supplement and clarify 
its statements. What men need to know, and what at all 
times they have sought to know, is God, and the mind 
of God toward them. And this is the message of Jesus: 
He reveals God and the need of God. You search the 
Gospels in vain for any trace of a disagreement between 
the teaching Jesus and the mind of the Father as that 
mind had been expressed in the Old Testament. We feel 
them to be one; and we feel them to be one because Jesus 
Himself felt Himself to be one with the Father. He 
has no shadow of hesitation in explaining the mind of 
the Father because in so doing He is explaining his own 
mind. He and the Father are one. Jesus is God, and 
knows himself to be God. 

That is the fact that we have to reckon with in any 
attempt to appreciate the teaching of Jesus—his con- 
sciousness that He is God, His presentation of His teach- 
ing as having the authority of God. I am unable to 
understand how anyone can read the Gospels and fail 
to gain the conviction that Jesus is sure of His own 


THE SUMMARY OF THE LAW 67 


divinity. His teaching is, no doubt, constantly about 
the Father; but He feels Himself so perfectly one with 
the Father that His mind is the Father’s mind, and His 
word the Father’s word. No one regarding himself as 
a merely human teacher bearing a message from God, 
could so absolutely indentify himself with God. He is 
not an echo: His is an original voice. He and the 
Father are one, and all things that the Father has are 
His. 

This is quite a different note from any that you find 
in the prophets. The prophets are always certain of 
their representative character. They draw attention 
away from themselves to their message. They sink 
themselves that they may exalt God. Jesus does not do 
that. He asserts truth as His. He does not hesitate 
to sweep aside a mass of traditional teaching with an “I 
say unto you.” ‘There are those to-day who profess to 
admire our Lord as a great—as the greatest of spiritual 
teachers; who would have us accept His teaching and 
follow Him on the ground that He was a man of supreme 
spiritual insight, because He, more than any other of the 
sons of men, has sympathetic understanding of the mind 
of God, and has therefore better than any other in- 
terpreted God to us. But it is not possible for me to ac- 
cept our Lord as a man of sympathetic insight into the 
mind of God, if I must first of all admit that He was 
mistaken about Himself in His plain assertions of His 
own divinity. Neither can I consent to leave the ques- 
tion of His Personality untouched, and accept His teach- 
ing without asking for any definition of Him. His 
teaching is all too revolutionary for that. Quite plainly, 
there are parts of it that I should hesitate to accept, if 


68 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


they were from the lips of man. I accept them because I 
am able to accept Him as all that He claims to be— 
God Incarnate, God revealing Himself to man. 

The teaching of Jesus does not seem to me what it 1s 
ordinarily assumed to be, primarily a teaching of human 
duty, of human goodness. These things seem to me al- 
together secondary in His teaching. His teaching is 
primarily about Himself. If He be the way, the truth 
and the life, and no man cometh to the Father but by 
Him, it is idle to say that the important thing about the 
Gospels is their moral fervor or their revelation of 
human brotherhood. The important thing about the 
Gospels is the self-assertion of Jesus, and until we have 
reckoned with that we cannot accept His teaching at all. 
I can have no confidence in the teaching of a man who 
masqueraded in the character of a God: I am ready to 
accept any word that falls from the lips of God reveal- 
ing Himself in human form. 

It is, then, because I believe with the Christian Church 
in all times that Jesus is God that I look to His revelation 
as the source of truth and guidance. My life is to be 
shaped in accordance with the teaching of the Gospel. 

The Gospel is to me the revelation of the mind of 
God because it is the revelation of the mind of Jesus, 
Who is God. That is its authority. I find in it difficult 
things and hard sayings that I should fret under and 
balk at if they had any other authority back of them. The 
Christian religion is not an easy religion to live by: the 
proof of that is that we are so prone to substitute some- 
thing else for it. The world has always been full of 
substitutes for Christianity, the reason for the existence 
of which you will find, if you examine them, is that they 
are either morally or intellectually easier than Christian- 


THE SUMMARY OF THE LAW 69 


ity. That is the explanation of heresy—that men have 
found Christianity too difficult. We are all the time being 
offered new systems, religions of the future and the 
like, which, we are told, will in time supersede the old 
Christianity of tradition. Possibly they will: I do not 
know the answer to our Lord’s question whether at His 
coming He will find the faith upon the earth. But 
whether they succeed or fail they are interesting to me 
chiefly as illustrations of the constant tendency of men 
to seek a comfortable religion—a religion that shall put 
as little strain upon them as possible. I myself do not 
see how religion can be other than difficult; how that 
which deals, by one side of it, with a revelation from 
God of Himself and His relations with men can fail to 
raise questions which present insuperable difficulties to 
the human intellect ; and by the other side of it, attempts 
to discipline the human passions, can do otherwise than 
arouse those very passions to the extremity of opposition. 
A religion involving neither moral nor intellectual diff- 
culties could only be a collection of platitudes such as 
modern substitutes for Christianity tend to become. 

One of the characteristics of our Lord’s teaching is the 
way in which it confines itself to moral and spiritual 
interests. Human speculation tries, naturally enough, to 
answer all questions. But religion is not a philosophy, 
and leaves its proper province when it attempts to become 
one. Christianity is often absurdly reproached with 
this—that it is not a philosophy or a science, and there- 
fore does not attempt to answer all questions that may 
be asked of it. Its defenders, as absurdly, often try to 
prove that it is. Religion is called upon to answer ques- 
tions which concern it not at all, or only remotely, and 
then men reject it because it cannot satisfy their curiosity. 


7O MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


If am unable to see why religion should be expected to 
solve scientific and philosophical difficulties about the 
nature of God and the structure of the universe. It is 
no objection to religion that it does not concern itself 
with such things, or to its claim to be a revelation that it 
does not contain answers to them. Our Lord markedly 
leaves all such questions outside His teaching. The 
province of religion, we gather from His teaching, is to 
bring to perfection the union that there is between our- 
selves and Him by removing all things in us that can 
check and hinder that union, and by developing all things 
that can minister to it. 

It is well that we should define the province of religion 
in our own lives. It is “what our Lord Jesus Christ 
saith”; that is, it is life guided by Him to the enjoyment 
of a perfect communion with God. I do not of course 
mean that any part of life is unconcerned with God; but 
only that certain things are not necessary to the achieve- 
ment of this communion. It is not necessary to it that 
we should have all problems solved and all questions 
answered; it is not necessary that we should have all 
difficulties removed and all ways made plain and easy for 
us. Indeed, it is the teaching of our Lord that problems 
and difficulties will remain unto the end. They remained 
in His human life; to the end it seemed possible that the 
“cup” might “pass from’? Him; in the end there was a 
hiding from Him of the divine power—a hiding of the 
Presence of the Father so that He could say, “Why hast 
thou forsaken me?’ ‘There were mysteries that were hid 
from His human mind—the mystery of the day and the 
hour that He knew not. We shall expect to find the 
same experience in ourselves. There will be mysteries in 
God’s providential dealing with us that will perplex and 


THE SUMMARY OF THE LAW 71 


try us; there will be pains that we are called upon to 
suffer that will seem to us meaningless, and removable if 
God would hear us; there will be trails to our faith and 
prayers that seem answerless, and cries that go out into 
the silence and that no one heeds. ‘These are difficulties 
that are hard to bear; but to one who loves God the 
hardest of all to bear is the silence of God. Yet if we 
have a true faith in Him these things shall not shake 
us; they will only draw us closer to Him in the con- 
viction that these things themselves are the signs of His 
presence, the evidence that He has not forgotten us, the 
witness that even now He is busy with our lives. 

There can be no doubt that there was something in 
our Lord’s teaching that fascinated those that heard Him. 
All those crowds were not impelled by curiosity merely ; 
and even if curiosity was a large element in their action, 
curiosity is only stirred by that which is new. There 
was something original in His teaching that brought the 
conviction that “never man spake as this man.” His 
influence, we gather, was less the influence of His word 
than of His Person. The words that He spake were 
“gracious words,” that is, they came with an added note 
of persuasiveness. There was a winning gentleness in 
His dealings with men; even when He rebuked, there 
would be no resentment, save in hearts hardened in pride 
and self-will. This is what we should expect when we 
remember that the Person who is speaking is Incarnate 
God,—that He is revealing to us the Father. The gentle- 
ness of God—that is what men needed to learn, though 
the prophets had read the truth centuries before; the 
gentleness of God, not the good nature of God, which is 
the modern reading of it. Good nature indifferently de- 
clines to consider the painful case, putting it aside as of 


72 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


no importance. Gentleness recognises the importance 
and deals with the case, but in such wise that we are 
thankful for the pain that results. Good nature says 
of a sin, “It does not matter much, after all: let it go.” 
Gentleness says that it matters so much that it cannot be 
let go; and by making one feel the awfulness of the sin, 
makes one accept with joy the means of purification. 
Good nature tells us that we need no remedy and leaves 
us to die; gentleness insists on applying a remedy, and 
saves us. No one ever spoke more sternly of sin than 
our blessed Lord Himself; but no one was ever more 
winning and gentle with sinners. 

This feature of our Lord’s teaching may, perhaps, be 
stated more broadly by saying that our Lord was always 
optimistic in His teaching. I think that this was one 
chief source of His attractiveness to the crowds that 
flocked to hear Him. They were men, for the most part, 
who had little to expect from life. They included a 
large element from whom society had ceased to hope any- 
thing. They were those whom society reckoned “hard- 
ened” and “irreclaimable’”’ and had done its best to make 
such. There were others—the greater number—to whom 
attached no social stigma, but who were conscious within 
themselves of their utter spiritual failure, and were un- 
able to perceive any ground for further hope for them- 
selves. The majority, at any time, are indifferent to 
religion; but if they could be stirred to think of their 
state at all, they would recognise that they were baffled, 
beaten, discouraged. Whatever impulses toward good 
they at any time felt were transitory, and while they 
lasted, met with neither encouragement, guidance nor 
cooperation. 

To all such our Lord’s teaching could not have been 


THE SUMMARY OF THE LAW FAS’ 


other than fascinating. Despair as they might of them- 
selves, He did not despair of them. When they looked 
up at Him, startled at hearing a personal note in His 
teaching, surprised to find their case considered and 
understood, their eyes met eyes full of comprehension 
and kindliness and hope. Despair as they might of them- 
selves, here was One who did not despair of them, Who 
could think of a future in which they should have a 
place. 

I fancy that more lives than one expects are in need 
of encouragement and sympathy—need to be taught to 
hope better things of themselves. People settle down 
in an unsatisfactory life without any illusions as to its 
unsatisfactoriness, with a pessimistic acquiescence in what 
they are as the inevitable. “O, I know: but it is useless 
for me to try. I am a failure, I know; but I cannot 
help it.’ They find what comfort they can in denials 
of the doctrine of future punishment—denials they them- 
selves feel are hollow. There is a good deal of danger 
in dwelling on the fact of sin without dwelling on the 
fact of forgiveness. If Christianity has accentuated the 
meaning and the disaster of sin, it has also opened wide 
the door of repentance and made plain the way of escape. 
And Christianity is not at all committed to the pessimism 
of the doctrine of heredity, because, while fully recog- 
nising it in its doctrine of Original Sin, it shows how 
it can be counteracted by its doctrine of regeneration and 
grace. These things we ought to bear in mind in deal- 
ing with others and with ourselves. Whatever may be 
the state of any soul—I care not how bad—there is no 
reason for acquiescing in it as a necessary state. I can 
be changed—that is the magnificent optimism of the 
Gospel. Think of your possibilities, rather than of your 


74 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


failures. There is nothing in the way of spiritual con- 
quest that is impossible for you; there is nothing in the 
way of spiritual development that you may not attain. 
Our Lord came, precisely, to call sinners; and sinners 
does not mean fairly good people who at times fall 
slightly short of their ideal, but it includes all who have 
sinned, I care not with what extremity and malignity of 
sin. An adequate response to the Gospel includes an 
optimistic view of ourselves. It is not pious, as some 
seem to think, to be constantly regarding ourselves as 
“miserable sinners.” It is the business of a Christian to 
be rid of sin and to go on to perfection; and it is of the 
essence of the teaching of Jesus that this is possible for 
all. It is a strange and distorted teaching that insists 
on sin as inevitable, and ignores the virtue of our 
Lord’s Blood, and the renewing action of God the Holy 
Ghost. 

This optimism of our Lord in regard to human na- 
ture finds itself criticised from another quarter. It is 
too idealistic, we are told. His religion might be taken 
seriously by angels, but hardly by men. And the con- 
sequence of His impractical teaching is that Christendom 
is silently agreed to ignore it and explain it away. Men 
have never lived by the Sermon on the Mount, and never 
can. The Christianity of Christendom has no resem- 
blance to the Christianity of Christ. 

We may as well admit the large measure of failure 
that Christendom has shown at all times when judged 
by the standard of Christ’s teaching. But that does not 
prove that the Christian religion as taught by Christ is 
impracticable, but only that we have not practised it. 
And over against the failure we must place the success. 
No one but an intensely prejudiced person can deny that 


THE SUMMARY OF THE LAW 75 


Christianity has had, and to-day is having, a tremen- 
dous influence both in ameliorating social conditions and 
in reforming individual lives. No one who has studied 
history can doubt of the tremendous effect of Christian- 
ity for good; no one who has tried to apply its principles 
to his own living doubts of their power or attributes the 
results he has obtained to anything else than the influence 
of Jesus. I think, too, that anyone who is able to take a 
broad view of history will agree that the influence of 
Christianity is a growing one, and is to-day, on the 
whole, stronger than ever before. That being so, the 
admission that Christendom does not, and never has re- 
flected completely the mind of Christ, is less disastrous. 
In the teaching of the Gospel is embodied in complete- 
ness God’s ideal for humanity. It was placed before the 
eyes of a humanity that was just able to perceive its beauty 
and its truth. It recognised that that ideal was not its 
in any adequate sense. And each succeeding generation 
of Christians has recognised the same thing. But Chris- 
tendom has never lost its sense of the value of the ideal, 
has never ceased to hunger and thirst after righteousness. 
It has not left it to unbelievers to point out its failures; 
it has been its own severest critic. And the blush of 
the Christian is a thing of infinitely greater significance 
than the jeer of the unbeliever, for it represents an ade- 
quate self-judgment and an unshattered determination to 
persevere. The Christian, feeling his own failure as no 
one else does, feels also his own possibilities, and presses 
on toward the ideal end. Because the ideal is high it 
takes long to reach it, but we have faith to believe that 
both the Christian Church and the Christian individual 
will at length fulfil our Lord’s command: “Be ye there- 
fore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” 


ere ie aT) ‘ 
Shs SRS TD = NY 
ce beac } 





THE FIFTH MEDITATION 


PER ORY RIT HER ISON 


Since the Introit is the entrance procession, and the cele- 
brant’s prayers at the foot of the altar are Preparation, the 
Kyrie Eleison is the first prayer in the Mass. The petition 
“Lord have mercy” antedates the Christian era, being found 
repeatedly in the Old Testament, where its use is already 
quasi liturgical. Nevertheless it is not one of the oldest 
features in the Mass. It was first used in the East, prob- 
ably in the fourth century, and was borrowed and intro- 
duced into the Roman Mass about the year 500. The Roman 
Mass was originally in Greek. The Roman Christians for 
at least the first two centuries spoke Greek, and it would 
appear that Latin was first used by the church in Africa, 
and not at Rome. Latin did not replace Greek in the Roman 
church until the third or fourth century. A trace of the 
early days remains in the Latin missal, in the Greek words 
of the Trisagion on Good Friday. The Kyrie is not such 
a fragment, but was borrowed from the East after the Roman 
church used Latin. It is believed to be a part of a litany, 
the rest of which has vanished. The Gloria in Excelsis, 
as a hymn of praise concluding a litany, followed, in the 
Latin Mass, immediately after the Kyrie; and this, its proper 
and traditional place, was retained in our First Prayer Book. 

The notion of a special liturgical language is a late de- 
velopment. The early Roman Christians, who were Greek- 
speaking, had their Mass in Greek. When Latin came to 
predominate the liturgy was translated into Latin. There 
are weighty arguments both for and against a vernacular 
liturgy and it is interesting to know that our own greatest 
translator of hymns, Dr. Neale, was opposed to it. But, 
from the point of view of the illiterate, it can hardly be 
claimed that the sonorous but archaic phraseology of the 
Prayer Book constitutes a vernacular liturgy. 


Let us listen to the words of Holy Scripture: 


Lest there be any—profane person, as Esau, who for 
one morsel of meat sold his birthright. 


Try to picture: 


SAU pleading with his father for a blessing. Esau 

had just come in from the chase and was bring- 
ing to his father the savory meat that the old man de- 
sired. But Jacob had forestalled him and received the 
blessing. It is a wonderfully vivid scene that the book 
of Genesis brings before us. The bewilderment of the 
blind old man, recognising with difficulty the deceit that 
has been practised by his younger son; the growing grief 
and indignation of Esau at the fraud that has been prac- 
tised upon him; and in the background we seem to see 
Jacob and his mother listening and watching, and planning 
to take what measures may be needful for their safety. 
As we watch the scene and see the understanding of what 
has been done grow upon Esau, our sympathies go out 
to him, in his exceeding bitter cry, “Bless me, even me 
also, O my father.’ It often happens that our sense 
of the value of a possession increases after we have lost 
it; and one feels that a good deal of the poignancy of 
Esau’s grief is due to the sense that he has been de- 
frauded rather than to any deep sense of the value of 
the Blessing which he has lost. But now he is himself 
convinced that the father’s Blessing is more valuable 
than all else; he no doubt imagines that always he has 

79 


80 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


valued it; that at least he must have some Blessing. 
“Hast thou but one Blessing, my father? Bless me, even 
me also, O my father.” Listen to that grief-stricken 
cry that seems to come out of Esau’s very heart. 


Consider, first, 


That when we get away from the dramatic effect of the 
scene, and consider calmly Esau’s character we begin to 
doubt, not of the immediate sincerity of Esau’s emotion, 
but of its inner truthfulness. The character of Esau as 
it is revealed by the story as a whole, and as the final 
fashioner of the story no doubt intended us to under- 
‘ stand it, is one of complete superficiality, capable of sur- 
face bursts of emotion, but incapable of intense and abid- 
ing purpose. It is the character of a selfish man who 
feels intensely any wound to self-esteem, any invasion 
of his personal rights, but whose emotion passes and his 
sense of injury is lost when some new object of desire 
comes to fill the field of his consciousness. Esau has the 
superficial quality of charm which makes a man attrac- 
tive to those whose interests, like his own, lie on the 
surface of things; but he is repellent to those to 
whom depth of purpose, sincerity, and an unselfish valua- 
tion of life are important things. Those who judge 
hastily are perplexed at the repeated condemnation of 
Esau in the Scriptures, and the preference manifested for 
Jacob whose character is superficially contemptible. But 
the reason of the preference is that Jacob was able 
through his sense of the value of the things that pertain 
to God to overcome and purify the glaring imperfections 
of his character, while Esau was never other than the 
superficial and trifling man of the world. His later 
meeting with Jacob, showing no trace of resentment for 


THE KYRIE ELEISON SI 


the past, shows too that he had found in his life all that 
he needed for his own satisfaction, and that he had not 
missed all that the Birthright and the Blessing stood for. 
He reveals himself as essentially a “profane person.” 


Consider, second, 


How typical this character is. It is the man who moves 
on the surface of life, who lives in the immediate present, 
unheedful of the depths that underlie existence and of 
the future that every soul must face. He is essentially 
a “profane person” to whom the “morsel of meat’’ that 
a life set on purely wordly aims seeks in the present 
gratification of desire is the willingly accepted equiva- 
lent for the bartered birthright. To such men the appeal 
of religion is merely an annoyance, an attempted inter- 
ference with what they describe as their liberty, an ar- 
bitrary limitation sought to be imposed upon their free- 
dom to enjoy life in their own way. Their life moves 
in the narrow circle of self-pleasing, and because they 
often please themselves in delicate and luxurious ways, 
avoiding the difficult, and declining the burdensome, cre- 
ating about them an atmosphere full of the melody and 
perfume of a graceful existence, they fascinate the un- 
thinking and, always doing good unto themselves, men 
speak well of them. In such the sense of sin and 
the need of repentance are wanting. What sometimes 
appears repentance is but the reaction of disappointed 
desire—morose resentment following upon failure to at- 
tain. They are so accustomed to have their way in the 
world, and to find the oyster of life open readily to the 
sword of their imperious desire, that they look on a 
thwarted wish as an act of injustice. But they have no 
sense of unworthiness, no sense of guilt, because they 


82 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


have no spiritual ideal. The loss of the Birthright to 
them is the passing failure of a wish, not a terrifying 
spiritual disaster. There do come moments of vision, 
or what seem such, in which the irrevocable past rises 
before them and they seem for the moment to repent and 
seek the irrecoverable “with strong crying and tears”; 
but it is a passing emotion soon replaced by the “fulness 
of bread” that still remains to them. “Thus Esau de- 
spised his Birthright.” It is out of a depth of soul un- 
known to such that men repent. 


Let us then pray, 


For the grace of true repentance. Let us pray for 
such insight into life as will enable us to estimate it at 
its true values. Let us pray for a deep sense of the 
meaning of our Christian Birthright. 

Lord, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to with- 
stand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the 
devil; and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee, 
the only God; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. 


THE KyrRIE ELEISON 


The cry for mercy which goes up to God in the Kyries 
is an echo of the prayer of the Publican: “God be mer- 
ciful to me a sinner.” That we are sinners is no Chris- 
tian discovery, though Christianity first made known the 
full meaning of sin. The conviction of their own sin- 
fulness in the presence of whatever notions they may have 
had of God is one of the fundamental human conceptions. 
It lies at the root, indeed, of a vast amount of religious 
cultus and is the explanation of much that is awful and 


THE KYRIE ELEISON 83 


revolting in religious rites. When those rites reach the 
climax of horror in human sacrifice, when a recreant peo- 
ple “built the high places of Tophet ... to burn their 
sons and their daughters in the fire,’ when a prophet 
testifies to the prevalence of the abominable custom in 
the words of protest, “Shall I give my firstborn for my 
transgression, and the fruit of my body for the sin of 
my soul?’’—it is a revelation of the intensity of the sense 
of sin which will be appeased only by the uttermost the 
sinner can do and suffer. All over the world men were 
holding up pleading hands over sacrifices which did not 
destroy the sense of sin or buy them peace and solace, 
“for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of 
goats should take away sin.” 

When we analyse this fundamental conviction we find 
that it contains two elements: the pursuit of an ideal 
which is felt to be compulsory, and the presence of the 
conviction that the ideal has not been attained. The ele- 
ment of compulsion is found in the belief that the ideal 
represents the will of some power or person outside of 
self who will visit failure with consequences. The ideal 
is not a philosophic or artistic ideal which it is desirable 
to attain but which one may not choose to strive for— 
it is not a counsel of perfection—it is the embodiment of 
a superior will that demands of man that he so shape his 
life as to conform to it. Over the man there hung con- 
stantly the threat of dire penalties ready to follow his 
failure; in the early period of human history penalties 
which were seen fulfilled in flood and fire and famine, in 
war and all its attendant horrors. Or again, in other 
regions of human thought, the penalties were such that 
man would face them on the threshold of another world. 


84 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Do what he might and could, he had always the convic- 
tion of an ideal missed, a law unfulfilled, and will not 
accomplished. 


What mortal, when he saw, 

Life’s voyage done, his heavenly Friend, 
Could ever yet dare tell Him fearlessly: 

“T have kept uninfringed my nature’s law: 

The nicely written chart thou gavest me, 

To guide me, I have steer’d by to the end.” 


This self-judgment upon one’s conduct, this certainty 
of one’s insufficiency, this conviction of sin, as it came 
finally to be called, is what we mean by conscience. Con- 
science is one’s judgment upon one’s self in the light of 
all the knowledge one possesses. “Conscience is no dis- 
tinct power or faculty of the mind of man, but the mind 
of man itself, applying the general rule of God’s law 
to particular cases and activities.” While no doubt it is 
true that one is obliged to follow conscience, it is also true 
that to take conscience as one’s guide is a very perilous 
adventure. One is oftentimes both amused and disgusted 
at hearing a man proclaim that he must act according 
to his conscience when it is sufficiently obvious that what 
he calls his conscience is his prejudice or his self-interest. 
The political blatherskite and the religious quack pro- 
claim their unfailing devotion to the supreme law of 
their conscience; a sane Christian is a little more guarded 
in such appeals. He understands that while his con- 
science must at any given moment be his guide, and, hon- 
estly dealt with, is a morally safe guide, it is nevertheless 
a guide that needs to be carefully dealt with. He knows 
that while his action may be for him morally safe, it 


THE KYRIE ELEISON 85 


may yet be morally wrong. For what is his conscience, 
or in other words his enlightened judgment, at any mo- 
ment may be founded on erroneous data, or prejudiced 
judgment ; and that these things are so may be due to his 
own heedlessness or sloth. In other words, what he is so 
confidently acting upon may be an erroneous and mistaken 
conscience. He has to act upon it—yes: but the question 
then arises, is he guiltless in acting upon it? And the 
answer has to be that he is not. That he is responsible 
not only for what he knows, but for what he, in the cir- 
cumstances of his life, ought to know. 

It is absurd, for example, to hold that persons brought 
up in ordinary Christian surroundings are guiltless in the 
case of unchristian belief or act because they were igno- 
rant of the teaching of the Christian Church. Their cir- 
cumstances made it quite possible for them to know Chris- 
tian teaching and practice: that they have not cared to 
learn it does not excuse from the obligation. We, of 
course, can only assess the external obligation: only God 
can know the internal; but the obligation itself is clear. 
As the law does not hold ignorance an excuse, so moral 
law cannot hold voluntary and preventable ignorance an 
excuse. The means of knowledge were provided and the 
use of them does not place any undue burden on the per- 
son who pleads ignorance. To take an illustration from 
the purely ecclesiastical field: There can be no manner 
of excuse for a person brought up in even a nominally 
Christian family in this country being ignorant of the 
Divinity of our Lord, and the obligation to worship Him. 
A person brought up in the Episcopal Church cannot be 
excused, through ignorance, from the obligation of fast- 
ing. Such an one may have a perfectly clear conscience 


86 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


in his neglect of the days of fasting and abstinence, but 
it is an erroneous conscience and a voluntarily erroneous 
conscience. 

How often one hears people say: “You know I am 
quite ignorant of such things. I was never taught them. 
In the parish where I went to church they were never 
mentioned,’ when the*things in question were elementary 
principles and practices of the Christian religion. The 
result is an uninformed and erroneous conscience. Can 
we say that action contrary to the mind of the Church is 
in such case innocent? There was no doubt a primary 
and sinful neglect on the part of the teaching authority 
to set out clearly the mind of the Church. It is no doubt 
deliberate sin on the part of the clergy when they ought 
to teach clearly and plainly Christian obligations to fail 
so to do. The fact that such teaching is not popular is 
no manner of excuse for its neglect. But I fancy that 
most priests of experience will receive with a rather large 
grain of salt the statement in excuse of some neglect 
that “these things were not taught in the parish where I 
was brought up.” One would want to know whether 
they actually were not taught, or whether the person in 
question did not avoid all occasions when they were 
taught. Every priest knows that the attempt to teach is 
largely blocked by the refusal to learn. We can hold 
classes and preach sermons, but we cannot “compel them 
to come in.” Ignorant and erroneous consciences are 
commonly the result of wilful neglect to learn. Even in 
cases where the clergy neglect to teach, there are still 
other means of learning, and the question arises whether 
they have been adequately used. And by adequately used 
we mean adequately with reference to one’s education and 
opportunity. It is merely silly, for instance, for a col- 


THE KYRIE ELEISON 87 


lege graduate to plead ignorance of ordinary Christian 
belief and practice upon the ground that he had never 
been taught. How can any intelligent human being in 
the Western world hold himself excused from knowing 
at least the elements of Christianity? There needs be much 
more insistence than is customary on the obligation to 
know, and on the fact that a person who is acting, as 
we say, conscientiously, may nevertheless be guilty in 
the sight of God because of neglect of the plain duty 
to educate conscience. 

It is unfortunately possible to kill the conscience en- 
tirely, as one sees in certain classes of criminals. And 
short of that it appears to be possible to deaden the con- 
science in regard to certain regions of conduct. There 
appear to be many engaged in business who regard the 
law as the only limit of their action. “Is it legal?’ is 
the only question they ask. There arises therefore a 
curious business morality based on legality and not on 
love, and which therefore has little in common with 
Christian morality. In social contact the convention of 
a social circle—‘‘what everyone does”—takes the place 
of the Christian conception of life. The child finds the 
vague morality taught him by the Sunday School or what- 
ever elementary religious instruction he received ignored 
in the circle in which he moves, most likely in the home 
circle itself. He is naturally influenced by the stronger 
environment. As he grows he finds his faint concep- 
tion of a ruling voice of God smiled at or sneered at by 
his companions. The result is a perverted judgment 
ending in an utter lack of response to Christian ideals 
in the matters concerned. Hence results a curious state 
of things: You find the membership of the Church 
largely composed of persons who ignore the elementary 


88 °©MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


rules of Christian living and acting in certain respects, 
while in others they act as Christians. We get eminent 
gentlemen on vestries whose business morality would not 
stand a Christian scrutiny. We get zealous women 
workers whose social behaviour displays an utter lack of 
Christian consciousness. And the youth of the Church 
abandon all rule or restriction in conduct. It is a curious 
spectacle, this of a selective conscience. It no doubt has 
always existed, but our contemporary circumstances ac- 
centuate it. The young who so gaily throw over obliga- 
tions to-day are of course those destined to suffer from 
the moral anarchy they are creating, when in their time 
they become the older generation. 


You may prate of your prowess in lusty times, 
But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays, 
And see too well your crimes. 


I suppose that no one would deny the fact that what 
we are witnessing to-day is a decadence of the notion of 
sin. The silly notion which is one of the chief contribu- 
tions of liberalism to the degeneracy of modern society 
is that you can throw overboard large portions of the 
Christian religion and leave the remnant unimpaired and 
energetic: that you can abandon Christian dogma and 
retain Christian morality: that you can abandon authority 
and induce people to follow religion by the seduction of 
sentimentality: and that you can give up belief in the 
future consequences of sin and still maintain standards 
of righteousness which will appeal to the average man. 
Naturally, it cannot be done, and that it cannot is no 
longer a theory, but the demonstration of the failure is 


THE KYRIE ELEISON 89 


all about you. Another generation of the public school 
product will leave us in utter savagery. 

The Christian religion is a whole, a vital organism, 
of such a nature that to destroy one part is to impair the 
life of the whole. To suppose that you can have the 
morals without the dogmas is as absurd as to suppose that 
a body can function normally without a brain. To sup- 
pose that in the training of humanity, and especially young 
humanity, you can dispense with authority in favor of 
moral suasion is to display an ignorance of human nature 
as it exists so radical as to suggest mental incompetence. 
You must have the Christian religion as a whole or 
accept the alternative—pure naturalism. 

Now at the center of Christian moral teaching is the 
conception of a will of God which can be known by all 
and which is binding upon all. There is no possibility of 
arguing with God. “All souls are mine,” in His declara- 
tion, and His will is supreme. The willing violation of 
that will is sin. And if we are to have in the world any 
morals or any civilization, or indeed any tolerable social 
order, we have got to recognise the outstanding facts 
of human nature as it exists and treat it accordingly. 
Human nature at present consists of masses of human be- 
ings who willingly lapse into pure animalism if they are 
left without control. You may call this pessimism if 
you like: but you have only to face the facts honestly to 
see that it is true. Anyone can easily conceive some- 
thing of what New York or London or Paris would be- 
come in six months if all law were suspended. Human- 
ity is held in any sort of order to-day by sheer fear and 
force. If it is ever to pass beyond that stage it can only 
be through acceptance of moral ideals which are compul- 


gQ0 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


sory. Moral ideals which have nothing to commend them 
but their own inherent beauty may glow with splendor 
in the pages of enlightened essayists and minor poets, but 
they will not control the streets of a modern city. The 
ideal must have back of it some other compulsion than 
that of moral beauty. And the only adequate driving 
power hitherto (in part) effective has been the acceptance 
of the will of God. That God wills a certain sort of ac- 
tion puts it on the level of authority: but only of effective 
authority when it is added that God not only wills but 
(unlike the modern teachers whom it is attempted to 
foist into His place) will enforce His will. 

In other words, we need and badly need a revival of 
the conception of sin: of conduct as being, not desirable 
or undesirable from a social standpoint, but as being 
acceptable to a Supreme Judge. “We must all appear 
before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may re- 
ceive the things done in his body, according to what he 
hath done, whether it be good or bad.” That is the only 
conceivable effective basis of morals: and it is to that that 
the conscience of man witnesses. 

To teach responsibility for conduct then, to teach the 
reality of sin, is what we need to insist on to-day. Just 
with what accent we shall teach them depends on the 
state of moral development of those we have to teach. 
It may be true, as Sir Oliver Lodge once said, that the 
higher man of to-day is not worrying about his sins at 
all, still less their punishment. That only defines our 
problem in dealing with the “higher man.’ To some of 
us it may seem that there is nothing in the spiritual ac- 
complishment of the “higher man” to justify him in put- 
ting himself forward as an example; rather his demon- 
strated spiritual incompetence will entitle him to keep 


THE KYRIE ELEISON gli 


silence in all the languages he knows. He appears to 
consider it an impertinence for God to die for him; he is 
quite able to look after his own future—in all the worlds 
there are. 

Possibly: but he has not so far demonstrated his abil- 
ity to do any work with this world in the way of spiritual 
improvement or moral order. And those whom he is 
teaching to disregard God and moral law are producing 
social anarchy. On all this needs impressing the unde- 
sirable lesson that sin has results, results of various or- 
ders. “Every smallest stroke of virtue or vice leaves 
its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle 
excuses himself for every first dereliction by saying, ‘I 
won't count this time!’ Well! he may not count it, and 
a kind heaven may not count it; but it is being counted 
none the less. Down among the nerve cells and fibres the 
molecules are counting it, registering it and storing it up 
to be used against him when the next temptation comes.” 
That is the consequence of sin as a non-Christian sees it 
—Professor William James. Here is the view of a 
Christian saint, St. Catherine of Siena. ‘‘He who is in 
mortal sin falls into poverty. He has lost the riches of 
the solid virtues through not following the crucified 
Jesus, and he cannot assist the poor since he is deprived 
of divine grace by darkness of soul; he has lost the light 
and he cannot see the evil or where it is; he commits 
injustice in place of rendering justice.” 

Sin results in misdirecting the energies of life, so that 
the life becomes unfruitful. The life of the sinner is a 
passionate struggle to attain a satisfaction only to find 
it vanish as it is grasped. This is the explanation of the 
feverish haste, the rushing from one pleasure to another 
which is so characteristic of the life that neglects God. 


Q2 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


It has no repose. It snatches eagerly at fruit which de- 
cays before it can be eaten. “The bewitching naughtiness - 
doth obscure things that are honest; and the whirl of de- 
sire doth undermine the simple mind.” The world to-day 
has gone insane over amusement, which is at once a 
sign of dissatisfaction and unrest and moral emptiness, 
and an attempt to eScape the haunting sense of a reality 
which threatens. The present generation is like trem- 
bling savages, making a fearful noise in hopes of scaring 
off the devils. But they only succeed in scaring them- 
selves and the day of reckoning draws nearer. The par- 
ticular sort of devils which threaten the modern world 
cannot be driven off by jazz bands and by silly dances. 

After all, sin is in ourselves; and the penalty is in 
ourselves. The real punishment of sin is to be a sin- 
ner, and that is a punishment which cannot be avoided 
and which the conscience enforces upon us at any mo- 
ment. And forgetfulness of it can be but momentary; 
the conscience may be dulled, but like the consciousness 
which is dulled with alcohol it is followed by an awak- 
ening that is ever more bitter. Even when the process 
of deadening conscience is carried to the limit, “the si- 
lence of a seared conscience is not peace.” You may 
heap sin on sin in the hope of achieving spiritual insen- 
sibility and in the end seem to attain it; but I fancy in 
the experience of even the most hardened there are mo- 
ments when the conscience speaks, moments when reality 
emerges in mockery of our efforts, 


Laughing like sin 
Which steals back softly in a soul half-saved. 


Sin is self-estrangement from God. God is love, and 
His demand on us is ultimately the demand for our love. 


THE KYRIE ELEISON 93 


To construe the claim of God on life as a claim for dom- 
inance, for obedience, the claim of a law-giver to rule, 
is imperfectly to construe it. There are no doubt certain 
who are so spiritually undeveloped that they can only 
understand God as Ruler and Law-giver, who are blind to 
love. For them a partial and elementary presentation 
of truth is the only presentation possible. There are chil- 
dren who have experienced rule only as force, and to 
whom in consequence moral ideals mean nothing: and 
there are adults who are still children in spiritual devel- 
opment. So far as they can conceive of love at all, they 
conceive of it as the opposite of justice, as a feeble sen- 
timentalism which lets one off from the deserved results 
of one’s conduct. To such only a very partial and ele- 
mentary presentation of God is possible. To tell them 
that God is love is to tell them that He is indifferent to 
moral values. But those whose vision of God has any 
clearness, who have seen Him as He is revealed in Jesus, 
find that sin is the withdrawal or the refusal of our love 
to God. The breaking of a law, the declining of an ob- 
ligation, the repudiation of a will, is but the consequence 
of our own act in breaking the bond of love. The ulti- 
mate account of our act is that it is the refusal of love. 
That is the disaster—we have been content, for our own 
ends, to repudiate and wound the love of God. 


My sin was as a thorn 
Among the thorns that girt Thy brow 
Wounding Thy soul. 


We protest that we do not mean this; but we can only 
so plead at the expense of our spiritual sanity. To plead 
thus is to plead that we do not know the nature of our 


Q4 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


action. But can any such plea hold good before the bar 
of conscience? Is not the obvious retort: “You were 
bound to know. You consider yourself a sane being: 
is there not a moral obligation to know the nature of your 
acts?’ It is possible that ignorance, like charity, may 
cover a multitude of sins; but the ignorance we plead is 
not such ignorance.~ The ignorance we plead is by the 
very fact conscious of itself and therefore has ceased to 
be ignorance in the true sense of the term. We suspect 
that we are doing wrong, but lest the suspicion should 
pass to certainty we throw a veil over it and look the 
other way, and the very act reveals that our suspicion 
has become certainty. Conscience is too acute to be de- 
ceived in that way, and it declines a false peace. “There 
is no sin which is not the purchase of pleasure at the 
price of peace.” 

Sin therefore is an attempt to purchase the impossible. 
It sells our Lord for the thirty pieces of silver and then 
discovers that the money does not satisfy and throws it 
away. It pursues one form of self-gratification after an- 
other, only to find in the end that there is no gratification. 
It tries to deaden thought and conscience by the denial of 
moral and spiritual responsibility, it goes on to the denial 
of God Himself: but only to find emptiness of soul in 
which there is still an echo of the voice of God. There 
is the struggle of an instinct to love to find the object of 
love. 


IT need Thee and I feel Thee and I love Thee; 

I do not plead my rapture in Thy works 

For love of Thee, nor do I feel as one 

Who cannot die; but there is that in me 

Which turns to Thee, which loves or which should love. 


THE KYRIE ELEISON 95 


This failure of sin to find permanent justification is 
inevitable because “sin is an attempt to get out of life 
what God has not put into it.”” God offers rest and peace 
and satisfaction, and these are offered, not on arbitrary 
conditions, but on the only conditions on which they can 
be had. Peace is rest in God, the achievement of union 
with Him: and only when this is achieved will the rest- _ 
lessness of conscience be stilled, only then are we able to 
pass a judgment on life which gives satisfaction. 

May we not then construe our Kyrie,—our cry for 
mercy—as a cry not only for forgiveness, but for that 
which lies beyond forgiveness—vision? Sin blinds. We 
stand on some beautiful clear night looking up into the 
unclouded heaven, with our eyes fixed on some one star, 
and of a sudden the star disappears! We see no cloud, 
but we know that some wisp of mist must have passed 
across the line of vision, some poor earthly thing which 
still was able to hide the light of heaven from our eyes. 
Such is sin, a poor earthly thing, a passing mist which we 
mistake for an abiding satisfaction, and the vision of 
heaven goes and we choose an earthly thing. But we 
know the mist will pass, and we know that while it lasts 
the star shines on: and we know that all that sin brings 
will pass, but the effect of the sin will not pass till we 
cry to God— So we say, “Kyrie Eleison, Lord, have 
mercy. Open our eyes and give us our hearts’ desire.” 
For at bottom we are not deceived: we know that sin 
is nothingness and that God is love. We know that sin 
is despair and that all our hope is God. 


For I dwell sure that God is love; 
Beholding all the grief and pain, 
I trow He wills that man should move 
From Peace through Peace to Peace again. 


96 


MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


And from the shadows struggling out 
I yet find this to lighten care: 
“Belief is better far than doubt; 
Hope fashions men, but slaves Despair.” 


THE SIXTH MEDITATION 
WEES COLLEGE POR G UTD AN Gz 


The Collect for Guidance is taken from the Breviary, Roman 
and Sarum, where it is used as one of the prayers said in 
chapter after Prime. 

Experience of a good many questions from those who are 
eager to follow the Mass intelligently suggests that something 
might be said here usefully as to its general structure and 
terminology and where the various parts are to be found. 
Roughly, the Mass is divided into the Ordimary and the Proper. 
The Ordinary is the invariable part which is identical in all 
masses. The Proper is that part which is peculiar to, and 
changes with, the day. The heart and center of the invariable 
portion is the Canon, or series of Prayers which include the Con- 
secration. The Proper, or variable portion, includes the Introit, 
Collect, Epistle, Gradual, Gospel, Offertory, a collect called the 
Secret, sometimes a Proper Preface to the Sanctus, an anthem 
or antiphon called the Communion, and the Post-Communion 
Collect. Every day in the year is either a Feast Day or a Feria. 
A Feria is simply a week day on which no Festival occurs. All 
Sundays are Feast Days. As the Sundays and the general course 
of the Church’s Seasons depend on the fluctuating date of Easter, 
while most of the saints’ days and other Festivals are attached 
to a particular day of the month, a sort of dove-tailing or 
adaptation of the one list to the other is necessary. Often a 
saint’s day will fall upon a Sunday or other Festival and rules 
are required to cover such coincidences, so that one may know 
which day is to be observed and which transferred to another 
date or merely “commemorated.” ‘These rules are based on the 
relative importance of the Feasts and Ferias. Even the Ferias 
vary in importance, those of Advent and Lent, the Ember and 
Rogation Days, and certain Vigils being ranked higher than many 
Feasts. All Sundays are Feasts Days of importance, only to be 
superseded by Festivals of high rank. On ordinary Ferias the 
mass of the preceding Sunday is said. Some of the Greater 
Ferias, such as the week days of Lent and the Ember and Ro- 
gation Days, have Proper masses of their own. In a complete 
missal the invariable Ordinary of the mass will be found near 
the center of the book, preceded by the Proper of the Season, 
beginning with Advent. After the Proper of the Season comes 
the Proper of the Saints, according to the calendar. Then, as 
many Festivals are not counted as of sufficient importance to 
have complete Proper masses of their own, there follows a 
section called the Common of the Saints, which contains masses 
to be used for certain classes of saints, such as martyrs, con- 
fessors, virgins, etc. At the end are the Votive Masses, that is 
Masses for special needs or occasions such as Requiems, the 
Nuptial mass, for the sick, and many others. 


NOTE. For those who wish to be able to follow all parts of 
the Mass on days not provided for in our present Prayer Book 
we know of no better book than the “Anglican Missal,” published 
in London by the Society of SS. Peter & Paul, which can be 
obtained in pocket size for the laity, and which is a complete 
missal. 


Let us listen to the Words of Holy Scripture: 
The Spirit suffered them not. 


Let us picture: 


T. PAUL, in his eagerness to preach the Gospel. 
GC) To him this was no self-chosen task. He had not, 
after mature meditation, made up his mind that it was 
the right thing for him to enter upon the work .of the 
ministry. This work had been thrust upon him by the 
direct intervention of the Risen Lord. Our Lord had 
broken in pieces S. Paul’s own theory of his life and 
duty, and had made him an Apostle and shown him what 
things he must suffer in that vocation. He had con- 
strained him with the sense of a tremendous obligation, 
so that he felt, “Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel.” 
To us it would seem, that being thus seized and con- 
strained and driven forth, that at least the Providence of 
God would have provided that he should preach the Gos- 
pel in the calm and peace of an assured mission without 
other pain or opposition than would spring from the nat- 
ural opposition of men to a system that was strange to 
them. So we read with surprise that long catalogue of 
trials and sufferings that was his lot. We see him going 
eagerly forth to his preaching, and hindered and over- 
ruled in it by the will of God Himself. We see him in 
perplexity as to the meaning of the will of God. We see 
him going “bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem, not know- 
ing the things that shall befall me there.” We see him 

99 


Ico MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


with his face set toward Asia, and “forbidden of the 
Holy Ghost to preach the word” there. We see him, 
with his companions, assaying “to go into Bythinia: but 
the Spirit suffered them not.” “Without are fightings, 
and within are fears.”’ Such was constantly the course 
of his life, 


Consider, first, 


That S. Paul does not fret or exclaim against this state 
of things; he takes it as the natural condition of his 
ministry. He recognises that his own will must be con- 
stantly referred to, and will often be over-ruled by the 
will of God. For he is not only exercising a ministry, 
but he is being therein trained to the worthy exercise of 
it. The ripeness and maturity of character to which he 
finally attained was the outcome of a will that was dis- 
ciplined to watch for and to follow in all things the will 
of God. There is only one success in life; and that is 
success in seeing and following God’s will. S. Paul’s 
greatness as a preacher of the Gospel lay much in this, 
that he had no plans of his own. His one plan was to 
preach where God sent him, and under the conditions that 
God provided. He might have his plans overset by ill- 
ness, or thwarted by unforeseen circumstance, or deliber- 
ately negatived by the revealed will of the Spirit, and he 
never shows irritation or resistance. It is not that S. 
Paul was of a submissive nature, or without tenacity of 
purpose. He could assert himself on an occasion with a 
deliberateness and a sternness that are unrivaled. But 
never against the will of God. This was because he had 
learned to dwell with Christ in heavenly places, and to 
draw the strength and direction of his life from thence. 
He had that true humility which consists in the utter 


THE COLLECT FOR GUIDANCE IOI 


abandonment of oneself to the will of God. Yet that he 
did not do this without pain is clear from the note of 
suffering and disappointment that now and again reaches 
us through his letters. He is not as one who greatly 
endured suffering, but as one who greatly accepted it. 


Consider, second, 


That the thing we find hardest in the spiritual life is 
the constant and ready reference of our wills to the 
will of our Lord; that the last thing that we die to is 
self. We may seem dead to the world, and dead to sin, 
but there will still linger something of self-will about 
us. We still resent the interference with our plans, 
as we think it, that the providential ordering of life 
brings about. We still dislike to find that our wisdom is 
not the wisdom of God: even when it is obviously the 
Spirit that is hindering us, we are prone to try to go on. 
Consider, that this can only be because our union with 
our Lord is not yet perfect, and the rift within that 
union is measured by the declination of the will from 
the will of our Lord. Perfect union is expressed by 
perfect harmony between our will and His; when that 
exists, we only need, as did S. Paul, to know our Lord’s 
will to have it become ours. This is not to lose our 
will, or to have it weakened, but to have it attain its 
mature strength, to become the underlying solidity of 
our character. In all social relations weakness is ex- 
pressed by disunion; and so it is in our relation to our 
Lord; there is no so great mark of weakness of char- 
acter as is expressed by the isolation of the will. True 
humility which reaches its zenith in complete surrender 
to the will of God, knowing and wanting no other will, 
is also the attainment of completest strength. Humility 


I02 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


is far from being the mark of weakness that the world 
thinks it; it is the realization for oneself through self- 
surrender, of those hidden sources of strength which 
abound in the Godhead itself. The truly humble person 
is as strong as God. 


Let us, then, pray, 


For self-abandonment to the will of God; that 
through leaning on Him we may find Him strong to shape 
and direct our lives. 

O God, who art rich in forgiveness, and for this 
cause willedst to assume our lowly flesh, that thou 
mightest leave to us an example of humility, and make 
us steadfast in all manner of sufferings; grant that we 
may always hold fast the good things which we receive 
from thee, and as often as we fall into sins, may be 
raised up by repentance, through thy mercy, and the 
merits of the same Jesus Christ our Lord. 


Tue COLLECT FoR GUIDANCE 


The collect which follows the Kyrie is identical with 
the last collect in the Office for Confirmation. It is a 
general prayer for guidance and protection and appears 
to have been introduced into the Communion Office as 
an appropriate conclusion to the recitation of the Com- 
mandments. The petitions which form the body of the 
collect are for actions which are commonly attributed to 
the Holy Spirit and the fact that it is the final collect 
of the Office for Confirmation .emphasizes this fact. 
We cannot go far astray, therefore, in thinking of this 
collect as a prayer for the guidance and help of the 
Holy Spirit in fulfilling the law of God. 


THE COLLECT FOR GUIDANCE 103 


We need to think of the Holy Spirit as the indwelling 
Spirit, as the Spirit Who inhabits the souls of the faith- 
ful. His work is largely concerned in helping us in the 
development of the virtues which are the expression 
of the spiritual life. When we are made Christians in 
baptism we are endowed with certain powers and capac- 
ities, or in theological language, certain virtues are then 
infused into our souls. These are the cardinal and theo- 
logical virtues and are strictly speaking supernatural 
endowments, that is, they are the creation of grace. 
There are also conferred upon us the gifts of the Holy 
Spirit and the spiritual life may not inaptly be described 
as the process of bringing the gifts and virtues to matur- 
ity and fruitfulness. They are conferred as it were in 
germ; they are potential powers. Their growth depends 
upon our use of them. We practice the virtues and we 
bring forth the fruits of the Spirit when we cooperate 
with the Holy Ghost in the work of our spiritual de- 
velopment. This work is a work of cooperation. We 
are according to that which is said, “Working out our 
salvation with fear and trembling because it is God who 
worketh in you both to will and to do of His good 
pleasure.” 

The everyday life of the Christian is a life which de- 
pends upon and draws from hidden sources of energy 
which are within. Its effort is to develop that which 
already exists, to use that with which it is endowed. 
This is the ground for constant hopefulness, the basis 
of the confidence with which we face life. We feel as 
St. Paul felt when he said, “I can do all things through 
Christ who strengtheneth me.” There is no limit to the 
power of God. There is therefore no limit to our pos- 
sibility of accomplishment. The limits of our actual 


104. MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


accomplishments are self-imposed. They are the limits 
of our cooperation with God. 

Looking directly at the details of the collect we note 
in the first place that it treats the human being as a 
whole. It is our hearts and bodies that are concerned. 
As we might paraphrase it, our spiritual and physical 
natures, the whole man; and there is certainly need to 
insist on this extension of the reach of sanctification to 
our whole nature. The body, to be sure, has become a 
fetich in our day, its worship is widespread, but it is a 
heathen worship, a delight in physical development. 
One would not, of course, criticise that development, 
only one would insist that the body is a sacred thing 
and that the misuse of its powers is a kind of blashphemy. 
One can hardly help connecting this purely pagan de- 
votion to the body with the equally pagan sensualism and 
sexuality with which so much of modern literature is 
saturated. Literature of course is but a symptom and 
indication of what men are thinking about. One can- 
not help seeing modern life losing certain qualities which 
it can ill afford to lose. Especially I think it can ill 
afford to lose the reserve and modesty, that were once 
ours, and are fast vanishing. It is easy to smile at some 
phases of their exaggeration and even unreality. But 
they had a value of a very positive kind and one really 
cannot think that the young lady who is disposed of by 
the epithet “Victorian” and “Puritan” is really eclipsed 
by the loud-talking, slangy, profane and _ cigarette- 
smoking creature who parades in a state of approximate 
nudity on the bathing beach of the modern summer re- 
sort. There are certain kinds of overemphasis which are 
better than no emphasis at all and a certain physical re- 


THE COLLECT FOR GUIDANCE 105 


serve is a necessary characteristic of a Christian. 

The body is an instrument, an instrument of the Spirit 
for sanctification or of the passions for degradation. It 
is a partaker of our sanctification because it is a par- 
taker of immortality. We shall rise again “with our 
bodies”; that is, the eternal world is a world of embodied 
spirits. In the present we act through our body and we 
know of no acts which are not bodily conditioned. 
Therefore, we are exhorted to present our “bodies a 
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is our 
reasonable service.”’ And our purity is based in the fact 
that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. “Know 
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost 
which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not 
your own.” ‘Then surely it would be the last misfortune 
of a spiritual being to “grieve” the Holy Spirit. 

So we go to God with our prayer for direction, for 
this is a very perplexing world and there are many voices. 
There is a clamor always in our ears and conflicting cries 
which would guide our feet. There are cries “Behold, 
he is in the desert,’ and then cries “Behold, he is in 
the secret chamber,” but we are not to listen. Rather 
we are to listen to the voice of the Spirit which is our 
true and safe guide, the voice that comes through revela- 
tion, the voice which is made clear after devout prayer. 
For there is a guidance of the Spirit which comes to 
each of us. And I do not at all mean that this guidance 
is exclusively the guidance of an inner voice; it is com- 
monly the external voice of authority, but we need the 
inner help of the Spirit to submit and to follow. When 
we pray for guidance we pray to get rid of self-will and 
prejudice and to open our souls to the voice of God, 


106 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


however that voice may make itself heard. And we re- 
member that it requires “the mind of the Spirit’ to in- 
terpret spiritual things. 

Apart from the authoritative voice of God speaking 
through revelation and the Church there is a limited 
source of guidance in our fellows. It would be strange 
if this were not so, for we are fellow-members of the 
Body of Christ, and in consequence members one of 
another. We have constantly to depend on one another 
in many things. It would be strange if spiritual help- 
fulness were excluded. And yet we have to remember 
that it is only the expert who can speak with any sort 
of authority. The only man who can speak with author- 
ity on spiritual matters is the spiritual genius. It is 
through the insight given by our spirituality that we 
can understand the natural world, man, and _ the 
Scriptures. This insight gives a man his perception of | 
spiritual values of all sorts. Spirituality developed to 
a high degree gives spiritual authority. Without spirit- 
ual development a man’s word in spiritual matters has 
no value. We recognize that it is only the expert who 
can judge in matters of art or music or literature. And 
then we listen to a man without any personal experience 
of religion in matters of the spirit. We treat respect- 
fully the utterances of infidels and worldlings, in matters 
of which only the spiritual expert can have knowledge. 
We commit the religious education of children to those 
who are themselves spiritually ignorant. Those who 
attempt to interpret religion are denying religious truth, 
are like a deaf man setting himself to interpret a sym- 
phony of which all that he can hear is an occasional drum 
beat or the blare of the bass. 

It is their intimate association with the Spirit, their 


THE COLLECT FOR GUIDANCE 107 


personal training by Him, that gives the Saints their 
authority in spiritual matters. They speak that which 
they know and testify that which they have seen. UI- 
timately the Saints are the embodiment of the tradition 
of the Church. There are other organs of enunciation, 
but we may rightly call the Saints the organs of verifica- 
tion. They bring the tradition that they have received to 
the test of experience and hand it on to their successors 
enriched by the further test of their living. It is this 
that gives us confidence in the teaching of the Church, 
that its formal dogmatic teaching has been brought to 
the test of a living experience in every generation. In 
the search for truth one philosophy is constantly being 
displaced by. another, because the philosophy of one gen- 
eration does not supply the intellectual needs of the next. 
The scientific dogma confidently asserted in one genera- 
tion is displaced by the growing experience of the next, 
but the dogmas of the Catholic faith are constantly 
being verified by the experience of the Saints. The 
dogma of our Lord’s divinity, for example, is found 
true by each generation which worships Him. The 
dogma of the Real Presence is not replaced or changed, 
but each generation finds it true and satisfying. The 
testimony of the Holy Spirit through human experience 
is therefore cumulative testimony. It increases in 
strength as the generations pass. The evidence for the 
truth of the Catholic religion is vastly stronger to-day 
than it was in the year 100. Intellectually it has been 
thought out and its content appreciated. It has been 
successfully defended against an unceasing series of at- 
tacks, with the result that its defense has been demon- 
strated to be impregnable. On the other hand, it has 
been used unceasingly and has stood the pragmatic test 


108 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


of experience. Its theory has been verified in so many 
lives that there is no possibility of doubting it. 

It is the Christian theory that this world is guided 
by the providence of God. That is the explicit state- 
ment of our Lord: “Are not two sparrows sold for a 
farthing? and not one of them shall fall to the ground 
without your Father: but the very hairs of your head are 
all numbered.” This particular and minute providence is 
felt by many to be hard to accept because it is hard to un- 
derstand. But we do not have to understand it in detail. 
We have but to believe that all life is under the direction 
of God. And if we believe at all in a God Who is inter- 
ested in human life we have to believe that He is not a 
mere onlooker, but that His interest is an active ordering 
of the world. The revolt from the belief in Providence 
really has its roots in the fact that there is much in 


life that we do not like and which we resent. We can- 


not conceive, we say, why God should bring about this 
or that. Possibly not, but that is hardly the question. 
Still I fancy that we can see more than we want to see. 
If we will open our eyes we can see that much that we 
resent is the direct outcome of our own actions. ‘That, 
however, by the way. What I am at present concerned 
with is not to justify the ways of God to man, but to 
emphasize the plain Gospel teaching of the divine order- 
ing of life and the consequent attitude of dependence 
and obedience to the divine will, however made known. 
Whatever difficulty such teaching may raise in detail, 
however this or that fact may be incomprehensible, we 
are bound to think of God as governing all life, though 
of course in such wise as to permit full play of our free 
wills. We inject an element of sin and disorder into 
life which necessitates, if one may so express it, a modi- 


THE COLLECT FOR GUIDANCE TOQ 


fication of the divine plan, but ultimately the divine will 
reaches its ends through overruling human perversity. 
We must accept the divine ordering in all things painful 
as well as pleasant, in sorrow as well as joy. The 
temptation to regard the person who escapes from a 
dangerous situation as a special favorite of Providence 
and the person who suffers through it as at least over- 
looked, is profoundly pagan and must be rejected. “God 
sends all our experience, not merely the part which we 
have singled out through allegiance to some theory and 
called good. It is all good, as it comes from God, all 
meant for our well-being. Our part is to accept it as 
from the divine wisdom in love.” 

The providence of God guides us not by miracle but 
by the ordering of events. The shaping hand of God 
can often be seen if we look for it. Our Lord impresses 
on us constantly in His teaching the need of attention 
to the course of events and especially blames those who 
disregard them. “And he answered and said unto them, 
When it is evening ye say, it will be fair weather: for 
the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul 
weather to-day: for the sky is red and lowering. Ye can 
discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the 
signs of the times?” The same lesson of attention is 
stressed in His oft-repeated, “He that hath ears to hear, 
let him hear.” I suppose that there is none of us who 
looking back over life cannot see the guiding of God 
therein. Possibly we did not see it at the time, but now 
we can see where we were guided and, it may be, saved 
from disaster, or where the way that we were to take 
was wonderfully opened. Or it may be we can see that 
what it is now clear to us was an offer of God, we in 
self-will or ignorance rejected with consequences which 


IlIO0 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


were disastrous. This is clear now. Would it not have 
been clear then if we had been alert and sensitive to the 
manifestation of the divine will? 

This external guidance of God is supplemented by an 
interior guidance. To perceive this requires on our part 
a spiritual sensitiveness to God’s voice, however it may 
come. God does speak to us in the recesses of our 
spirit. As the result of prayer, the obscure does become 
clear and the difficult problem solved. There is, as we 
say, borne in on us the conviction of the course of action 
we should pursue. We cannot explain this; we cannot 
make our grounds of certainty clear to others; but we 
ourselves have arrived at certainty. This is a common 
spiritual experience and one that can be trusted. No 
doubt we blunder from time to time and mistake our 
wishes for the mind of God. But such self-deceit is 
rather easily detected. We only deceive ourselves when 
we want to and such deception is not very deep. 

This communication of God’s will through the spirit 
is one of the frequent phenomena of sanctity. It is 
characteristic of the saint that he knows, and he knows 
because he is habitually doing God’s will and is there- 
fore in a state of sympathy with God and has developed 
a certain spiritual receptivity. He knows how to ask ac- 
cording to the will of God; hence the depth and fertility 
of his prayer life. His prayer is a true communion with 
God and often he is quite conscious of the immediate 
response of God. As we study the prayer life of the 
saints we feel no doubt very far off from such vivid ex- 
perience. But when we look into our own experience, we 
find, I think, that it is a difference of degree only. We 
have some experience and it is of the same order. It is 
enough to make us understand. The saint seems in con- 


THE COLLECT FOR GUIDANCE Ii! 


stant communication with God, to find Him whenever 
he turns to Him. That is not so true of us. But it is 
true that we have this experience occasionally. We have 
flashes of the consciousness of God, moments of sure 
communion when we are in the very presence of God. 
To the saint it seems to us the sun shines all the time, 
while with us it only in moments breaks through the 
clouds that habitually veil our sky. We no doubt over- 
estimate the continuousness of the saint’s consciousness 
of God; but be that as it may, the Sun that breaks 
through our clouds is the same Sun that shines on the 
saint. 

Clearly, then, what we need if we would approach 
the saint’s degree of God-consciousness is the same in- 
tense cultivation of sanctity. In theory sanctity is a 
rather simple thing. It results from correspondence with 
and use of the grace so freely bestowed upon us by 
God. The sanctifying grace which begins for us with 
our communion with God in our baptism need never be 
forfeited and we may grow up into Him in all things 
which is the Head, even Christ. This is the theory. 
The practice is commonly difficult. Besides sanctifying 
grace there are all the actual graces which constantly 
aid us on our pilgrim way. It is the common experience 
that we fall into sin and so forfeit grace, and have to be- 
gin over again. Still I am inclined to think that there 
are more people who have never forfeited the grace 
of their baptism through mortal sin than we are wont 
to suppose. My experience as a confessor leads me to 
this conclusion. Why then is there not visible greater 
growth in sanctity? I believe that one of the common 
troubles among “good people’—I mean those who are 
regular in their duties and do not commit mortal sin 


I1I2 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


—is a failure in any adequate use of grace. We see 
the corner of a garden where a few plants are struggling 
to maintain life, but though they live their growth is 
stunted. The soil, if we examine it, is as good as that 
of the rest of the garden. There is the same amount 
of light and water, but the plants do not grow. Why? 
The cultivation is defective. The gardener has neglected 
to attend to this particular spot. There are souls like 
that, that present a stunted appearance because they are 
not adequately exercised. You find many “good people” 
who are good in a negative sort of way. Their environ- 
ment presents no real temptations, they stagnate and are 
without spiritual ambition. They have no devotion. 
They move about in a narrow field of spiritual exercises, 
but they never go beyond. They hear no voice that calls 
them. Placid, content, innocent, they still fail to at- 
tain what they ought to attain, and what their very cir- 
cumstances suggest that they attain, a growing sanctity. 
They are like people in a shut-in valley, who live quiet, 
peaceful lives, but without real contact with the stirring 
life of the world. I read somewhere the other day these 
words, which seem to me to be the utterance of such 
a soul as I have been trying to describe: “We ought 
not to sacrifice a single moment of pleasure in an 
attempt to do something which is too big for us. And 
as a rule men and women are always attempting what is 
too big for them. ... Don’t bother yourself by what 
is beyond you; try and lead a sweet, clean and wholesome 
life. Keep yourselves in health above everything. 
Stick to your work and when your day is done amuse 
and refresh yourselves.” This would seem adequately to 
express the philosophy of the commonplace and if you 
translate it into terms of religious practice you get the 


THE COLLECT FOR GUIDANCE 19 Wes 


religion of the commonplace. After all, how do we 
know that anything is too big for us until we try? 

If we are in earnest in our prayer that God will 
govern us wholly, both our hearts and bodies, we shall 
be much less looking for an external law of direction 
than for an internal prompting of the Spirit. There is 
no doubt an external guide to action. We find this in 
the teaching of the Christian Church. But between the 
external guide and the will of the individual there is a 
necessary link of connection. The rule as law does not 
of itself move the will. Weare only too familiar with the 
fact that there is often a great gulf fixed between know- 
ing the right and doing the right. An external law has 
no moving power. Between the machine and its work 
there has to be power, power applied in such wise that 
the machine will do its work. And between the right 
which the intellect sees and the will to accomplish it 
there must be some power to set the will in operation. 
This is the power of the Spirit, the ceaseless impulse 
of the divine Guest. In Him is to be sought the source 
of right thoughts, right impulses, right determinations. 
“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and 
to do of his good pleasure.” Hence the vast importance 
of interior watchfulness. It is so easy to let the inner 
voice be unnoticed because our attention is distracted to 
voices which are more clamorous and more insistent. 
Amid the hoot of the motors and the rattle of the 
trains and all the distracting babel of a modern city 
street it is often impossible to hear the voice of the 
friend at one’s side, unless we listen with concentrated 
attention. So, when the mind finds so much to dis- 
tract it and the senses clamor so loud for gratification 
and when an acquired habit pushes us along the ac- 


Ii4. MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


customed groove, it is not easy so to abstract one’s 
self as to hear the murmur of the conscience and the 
whisper of the Holy Spirit in the recesses of the soul. 
And yet it is possible. In the deafening noise of a school 
yard one manages to isolate and to recognize the voice 
that one loves. So is it love that guides the trained ear 
of our spirit to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit 
when He speaks to us. “The sheep follow him: for 
they know his voice. And a stranger will they not fol- 
low, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice 
of strangers.” 

There is the heart of the secret,—that the sheep know 
the voice of the Good Shepherd. They are quick to 
recognize it among the shoutings of all other voices. 
How do they know it? They know it because they have 
learned to love it; therefore they recognize its least word. 
It is love that carries them out into the dim pastures 
where the Shepherd leads them, and where his voice is 
the only guide amid the mists that cover the fields of life. 
It is love that makes all the weary way of the pilgrim- 
age possible to them. It is love that kindles the flagging 
will to glad response to the law. Then can the soul of 
the servant say, “Lord, what love have I unto thy law! 
all the day long is my study in it.” It is love that lifts 
the burden, gives the feet liberty to follow the guide. 
“T will run the way of thy commandments when thou 
hast set my heart at liberty.” We deceive ourselves 
when in moments of perplexity we tell ourselves that 
it is the mind that is befogged and the intellect that wants 
clearing and convincing. Rather it is the heart that has 
failed. When the heart has been set at liberty, when 
the affections have been rescued from unworthy ob- 


THE COLLECT FOR GUIDANCE II5 


jects and rightly directed, then shall we rejoice and be 
glad in the restored sense of the divine presence. What 
we have mistakenly assumed to be intellectual perplexity 
was just the longing of the thirsty soul after God. “My 
soul thirsteth for thee; my flesh also longeth after thee: 
in a barren and dry land where no water is.” It may 
be that the “barren and dry land” where we have been 
seeking God is the land of speculation. We have sought 
God as the conclusion of an argument rather than as the 
object of the heart’s desire. That is to seek on the 
wrong track. 


Not to me 

The Unmoved Mover of philosophy 

And absolute still sum of all that is, 

The God Whom I adore—not this! 

Nay, rather a great moving wave of bliss, 
A surging torrent of dynamic love 

In passionate swift career 

That down the sheer 

And fathomless abyss 

Of being ever pours, His ecstasy to prove. 


“That we may be preserved in Body and Soul’— 
We come back to the thought of our dependence, that 
day by day we are drawing our life from the Source of all 
life, our strength from the Source of all strength, and 
drawing it for use. There are works of God’s command- 
ments which have to be executed here and by us. We 
are what we are because redeemed, sanctified through the 
mercy of God. The new life which we feel pulsing 
through our veins is the life of the Son of God which 
has been imparted to us by our participation in the 


116 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


sacraments. It is imparted to us as a sacred trust, a 
trust which carries with it on our part the obligation to 
obedience and fruitfulness. 

Do we find obedience a hard word? If so, we have 
as yet disastrously failed to understand our relation to 
God. There is no doubt an obedience which is the re- 
sult of fear, and is the forced action of an unwilling will. 
Such an obedience is not a spiritual quality. Obedi- 
ence as a spiritual quality is the glad, eager response of 
the will of man to the will of God, when he sees that 
will. It is the offering of love. “We must do all for 
love and nothing by force,’ St. Francis de Sales says, 
“We must love obedience rather than fear obedience.” 
And in order to the possession of this virtue, I suppose, 
we must learn to fix the attention on God Who wills, 
rather than on the thing willed. John Newton said, “If. 
two angels were to receive at the same moment a com- 
mission from God, one to go down and rule earth’s - 
widest empire, the other to go and sweep the streets of 
one of the meanest villages, it would be a matter of 
entire indifference to each which service fell to his lot, 
the post of rule or the post of scavenger, as the joy of the 
angels lies only in obedience to God’s will and with equal 
joy they will lift a Lazarus in rags to Abraham’s bosom 
or be a chariot of fire to bear Elijah home.” 

Surely that is the only possible outcome of a life that 
is instinct with love; a grudging love is not love at all. 
A true love is a love that forgets the very notion of 
obedience in the passion of its service. It stimulates and 
draws out strength. The exercise of love is the most 
dangerous of all adventures. That is what our Lord 
found when love sent Him into the world on a mission 


THE COLLECT FOR GUIDANCE Lie 


of rescue. The path of love which His foot touched 
in Bethlehem, faithfully followed led on to Calvary. 
St. Mary found that her acceptance of the vocation to 
the Mother of God was an association with One Whose 
companionship and love meant a soul pierced again and 
again by the sword of sorrow. A selfish and indiffer- 
ent man passes through the world with a minimum of 
friction. He avoids all obligations which spring out 
of love and the will to sacrifice self for others that love 
inspires. It is the man who loves the Lord his God 
with all his nature and who loves his neighbor as him- 
self who runs risks. It is love that sends men out on 
perilous quests, that exposes them to misunderstanding 
and obloquy, that drives them to lives of unselfish labour 
and often ends by hanging them upon a cross. There 1s 
nothing so dangerous as great love. 

But also there is nothing so invigorating, nothing that 
so enables one to face problems which arise out of the 
providential ordering of our lives; that enables us not 
only to face the exacting and the perplexing, the hardness 
and the pain, but enables us to face what is oftentimes 
more trying, the merely commonplace. That which 
makes great demands may call out great response, but 
that which demands just day by day patience and care 
may easily find us unwatchful. There is a wisdom we 
would do well often to meditate in the petition in the 
Lord’s Prayer—‘“Give us this day our daily bread,” the 
bread of grace which will enable us to meet the con- 
tinual demands of the day. There is a constant drain 
on our spiritual resources that can only be met by con- 
stantly renewed supplies. Therefore we need to go on 
our way with love and prayer hand in hand. 


118 


MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


With heart and eyes unquestioning, friend, 
We follow love from sea to sea, 

And love and prayer have common End: 
“May God be merciful to me.” 


THE SEVENTH MEDITATION 


PAE CORLL? 


Immediately before the Collect the celebrant kisses the 
altar, turns toward the people and says “The Lord be with 
you,’ then goes to the Epistle corner, says “Let us pray,” 
and reads the Collect. The kissing of the altar is an act of 
reverence before turning his back on it. Greeting the people 
with the words “The Lord be with you” is a feature which 
comes from the earliest forms of the Mass. This saluta- 
tion is found repeatedly in the Bible (e.g., Ruth ii, 4; II 
Thess. iii, 16). Anciently it was said before the Collect, 
the Gospel, the Offertory prayer, the Sursum corda the 
post Communion, the Jte, missa est and the Last Gospel. In 
the proposed revision of our Prayer Book “The Lord be 
with you” is restored at some of these places. The Collects 
which we are accustomed to are in great contrast to those 
used by the Eastern Church, which are generally verbose 
and ornate, whereas ours are short and plain. Usually the 
shortest are the oldest. First God is invoked, then the peti- 
tion is stated, and commonly it is of a very general nature, 
then the conclusion, “Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who 
liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, 
one God, world without end,” or similar words. In the 
old MSS., where abbreviations and contractions were com- 
mon, it was customary simply to indicate this ending by its 
first words,—“Through Jesus Christ ...’, and the endings 
of many of our Prayer Book Collects are thus abbreviated. 
But it was the intention of the compilers that the full end- 
ing be said, except when more than two Collects are used, 
in which case the full ending is said after the first and last 
and none at all after the others. “Let us pray” is said be- 
fore the first two only. On ordinary Sundays, on Ferias 
and on the less important feasts, three or more Collects are 
said; on the greater days but one. When a saint’s day 
falls on a Sunday, or when two feasts fall on the same day, 
one of them is kept, with its proper mass, and the other is 
generally “commemorated,” i.e., its Collect and Post Com- 
munion are said after the Collect and Post Communion of 


the days observed. 


Let us listen to the words of Holy Scripture: 


He came to the house of Mary, the Mother of John, 
whose surname was Mark; where many were gathered 
together praying. 


Let us picture: 


HIS gathering of Christians in the house of the 

Mother of S. Mark. It was perhaps the house 
where they had gathered, not so very long before, with 
our Lord to celebrate the Last Supper; the house, too, 
which served them as the first church where they con- 
tinued in the daily breaking of the Bread. How full of 
memories the place was for them already! Here they 
are gathered this night, a frightened company, with the 
shadow of persecution lowering over them. Herod had 
seized James, the brother of John, and put him to death 
with the sword; and then the hand of the persecutor had 
been stretched out once more, and had taken Peter also. 
What could they look for but to be led one by one to the 
headsman’s block? On whom would Herod’s choice fall 
next? What refuge had they from the sword? They 
have the Christian’s unfailing refuge—prayer. There 
is no doubt or hesitation as to whom they shall turn; 
their crucified and ascended Lord is all powerful to aid 
them. Let us picture to ourselves that assembly of the 
church, passing the hours in supplication. If ever there 
was a case in which prayer was hopeless we should think 
that this was one. But they know nothing about hope- 

121 


122 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


less prayers! And then in the midst of the prayer, the 
knocking! How natural is that touch of Rhoda, hearing 
the voice of Peter and then running away without open- 
ing the door. How very human is their disbelief in the 
answer to their prayer, when it came! One fancies that 
a story often told in years to come! 


Consider, first, 


That the church grasped from the beginning the mean- 
ing and the power of united prayer; they seized upon 
the sense of our Lord’s words that where two or three 
were gathered together in His Name, there would He be 
in the midst of them. They understood, however, dimly, 
that they were more powerful as a body than one by one. 
Their corporate character, as the Body of Christ, was 
already present to their consciousness. The first Chris- 
tians never show any trace of the modern feeling of 
being a collection of units brought together for certain 
temporary purposes; they always show their feeling of 
their oneness as the Body of Christ. It is the Church 
that we find here this night, offering supplication for one 
of its members. And how prevailing that supplication 
is!| It opens prison gates and breaks off chains and 
brings the Apostle to their very doors! It was the 
mightiest of all instruments that they were wielding, an 
instrument to the power of which they were as yet un- 
accustomed; they were making proof of our Lord’s 
promise, whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, it shall 
be done unto you. You have seen a child test a promise 
that you have made it, and then smile with mingled sur- 
prise and joy as it came true. That seems to have been 
their feeling, and we can almost see the happy joy on 
their faces as the door at length is opened, and Peter 


THE COLLECT 123 


comes in! All their danger, all their terror would have 
been for the moment forgotten in the gladness’ of the 
reunion. “But he, beckoning unto them with the hand 
to hold their peace, declared to them how the Lord had 
brought him out of the prison.” 


Consider, second, 


That intercession has its constant place in the life of the 
Church; it is the chief business of the Church to pray. 
The Holy Sacrifice, the Church’s great act of worship, is 
also its great act of intercession. Consider the majestic 
sublimity of that great prayer of all-embracing interces- 
sion, the prayer for the whole state of Christ’s Church 
militant! How it folds, as in a garment of glory, the 
needs of the whole of the Body of Christ! And how 
wonderful it is that we may, as it were, insert our own 
private petitions within the folds of that robe! And one 
never gets over the strangeness of our little use of the 
power so richly given. We are so formal and con- 
strained in our religion—or is it so unbelieving ?—that 
we rarely dig up the treasure that is hid in our field. 
The power of the praying Church 1s so endless, and our 
needs are so constant and so great, that one would think 
that intercession would be the great business of our 
lives; but, alas, it is not. Every need of the Church, of 
the parish, one would think, would bring us together; 
that there would be eager demands for special days and 
special services of intercession, but there is not. It must 
be that we have a declining faith that we are caught by 
the modern spirit of unbelief, or that we have lost grasp 
on the doctrine of the Body of Christ as a Body endowed 
with interceding power whose Head is ready to execute 
every holy wish of His members. We are as those who 


124 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


have great gifts within their reach, and will not stretch 
out their hands to take them. Consider, how in the 
whole history of the Church its first thought in joy has 
been thanksgiving, its first thought in trouble or need has 
been intercession. 


Let us, then, pray,” 


For a deeper appreciation of the power of the Body 
of Christ in prayer; let us pray that we ourselves may 
better fulfil our obligations as members of that Body. 

Almighty God, who hast promised to hear the peti- 
tions of those who ask in thy Son’s Name; We beseech 
thee mercifully to incline thine ears to us who have now 
made our prayers and supplications unto thee; and grant 
that those things that we have faithfully asked according 
to thy will, may effectually be obtained, to the relief of 
our necessity, and to the setting forth of thy glory; 
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. 


COLLECT FOR THE Day 


The public prayers of the Church are guided by the 
varying occasions on which they are offered and notably 
by the changing seasons of the Christian Year. That 
year presents to us the whole round of Christian teach- 
ing based on the life of our Lord. It is therefore the 
natural thing that the public prayers should fall in with 
this sequence and reflect its teaching. This has many 
advantages, among others the advantage of preventing 
the teaching of the Church and the clergy from becoming 
one-sided, from indulging in a false or strained emphasis. 
It cannot altogether control the pulpit, to be sure, but 
it can correct and balance it. I remember an old priest 


THE COLLECT 125 


who was an expert in ornithology and whose sermons 
were said to be filled with bird lore. But though he 
might preach on birds on Christmas, he would still have 
to read the Christmas Scriptures, which would offset the 
birds. One can imagine if there had been no Christian 
Year that the lessons he would have selected would have 
_ been such as contained allusions to birds; and in general 
an extemporaneous service will tend to repeat the taste 
and interest of the one who conducts it and will inevitably 
lack measure and balance. This the stated service of 
the Church prevents. 

The whole drama of our Lord’s life and work is year 
by year set out before us as the basis of our prayers. 
We begin with the thought of the Advent and we follow 
our Lord step by step till the clouds close about Him. 
And then we heed the words of the angel and go back 
to the everyday duties of life, to life, that is, considered 
in the light of our Lord’s teaching. During the weeks 
from Trinity to Advent we are engaged in detailed con- 
sideration of the Gospel teaching. It is a very profitable 
study to go through the Eucharistic Scriptures and note 
how they carefully bring out our Lord’s life and work 
and teaching, to note how the Eucharistic Scriptures for 
any day are carefully chosen with a view to some special 
teaching, and how this teaching has been woven into the 
Collects. The Collects are devotional gems and are 
literary gems as well. The Collects of the Prayer Book 
are unsurpassed in their richness and beauty. Most of 
them are translations of ancient liturgies, but those that 
were composed at the time of the compilation of the 
Book of Common Prayer are not behind them in beauty, 
while those that are translations are put into English at 
its very best. We have only to compare modern transla- 


126 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


tions of ancient collects and modern creations to realize 
the vast difference. The modern lack of form and rich- 
ness is notable. There is nothing quite so barren of 
beauty and spiritual suggestiveness as some of the col- 
lects provided for feasts of recent creation. 

One great purpose and value in the control exercised 
by the Christian Year over our prayers is that it almost 
forces us to apply the fundamental facts of Christianity 
to our daily interests. It compels us to understand re- 
ligion as a whole and prayer as related to the whole. 
The divorce between the Christian facts and the Chris- 
tian acts is, one fancies, pretty general. The Incarna- 
tion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, are facts to be be- 
lieved; but they are not facts to impose present action; 
they do not send us to our knees. But if they do not 
we can hardly think we have made much use of them. 
This is the fact: Christianity is not a system of abstract 
and static values, but a system which presents facts 
filled with potent energy, of which we are to make 
effective use in life. The fact of the Incarnation re- 
leased and set in operation immense spiritual forces of 
which we are still experiencing the results. But this is 
not an exhaustive account of it. The Fall of Con- 
stantinople and the discovery of America also set in 
operation forces of which we experience the results, but 
the forces themselves have passed out of existence and 
are no longer available. But the forces released by the 
Incarnation are as strong and as available to-day as they 
were when the Angel Gabriel greeted Mary of Nazareth 
with his Ave. We are now in vital relation with In- 
carnate God, and draw strength and inspiration from 
Him. Therefore our prayers are not reminiscences of 


THE COLLECT 127 


the past, but appeals to existing reality. So we cannot 
only pray to God in thankful remembrance of the fact 
that He has given us His only begotten Son to take 
our nature upon Him and to be born of a pure Virgin, 
but we can also plead the fact that we are now, through 
our relation to Him and His action upon us, His regen- 
erate children, as the basis of our petition daily to be 
renewed by the Holy Spirit. The fact of the Incarna- 
tion thus becomes the inspiration of our prayers and the 
revelation of our needs, and all other facts of the Chris- 
tian religion are seen through the treatment of them in 
the Collects to be capable of the same sort of personal 
application, so that the order of the services of the 
Christian Year, if properly attended to, compels a broad 
appreciation of the Christian life. 

Among other things that we are intended to learn from 
the round of public worship is our own place in the 
Body of Christ. There is so much in life which tends to 
isolate us one from another and to promote a purely 
individualistic attitude. Especially is this so in spiritual 
matters, where we find it so hard to share our religion 
one with another, to open even the tiniest crack in the 
door that closes upon our spiritual experience, that an- 
other may know something of our inner life. Now, our 
Lord no doubt warned us against Pharisaism and told 
us when we pray to go into our closet and shut the door, 
but he also told us to proclaim upon the housetops what 
we hear in the ear, and surely among the most vital 
things that we hear are the experiences of the Presence 
and of the working of our Lord in our souls. There is 
a certain application of the Communion of Saints that 
we are likely to miss. Among other things that Com- 


128 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


munion must mean a sharing of spiritual treasures, the 
treasures of the experience of the love and mercy of 
Christ. 

As one thinks of the state of the Church and what 
are its failures and needs, one is often oppressed by a 
realisation of the loneliness of the spiritual life among 
its members. It is .so astonishing and so incompre- 
hensible, for human beings are social beings. We see 
them everywhere in companies, they meet together to 
celebrate all sorts of anniversaries and festivals, they 
initiate innumerable societies of a social character, and 
then, when their religion is concerned they negative all 
this, they shut themselves up in their shells and pursue 
whatever spiritual activities they may have in profound 
secrecy, or at least in isolation from others. One can 
hardly overestimate the spiritual loss that has resulted 
from this state of things, especially the loss that results 
in the training of the young. If there ought to be a 
spiritual unit anywhere, that unit should certainly be the 
family. But how often is the family a spiritual unit? 
Disregarding the prevalent and lamentable cases of 
divided families and thinking only of such families as are 
united in a common faith, how often is there anything 
common about it? Is there anything like a common 
religious life? Anything the members do in common? 
They will pray, but they will pray by themselves. There 
are, it may be, religious discussions, but is there any- 
thing like spiritual conference? Perhaps they will come 
to church together, but even there do they really get 
together? Is the child taken in hand by the parent and 
carefully taught how to worship and what he is to aim 
at and what he is to expect? How often is there any act 
of united worship in the family? How often does the 





—————— se eS ~ 


THE COLLECT 129 


father or the mother take the young child into the church 
to teach him the Real Presence, or the honor due to the 
saints, or to associate him in some simple act of worship? 

I suppose when we think of these things, many of us 
can look back on our own lives and feel how true they 
are, and how much we have missed. We did not under- 
stand at the time, but we can see now that we were con- 
demned to grope in the darkness, feeling ignorantly for 
a spiritual experience of some sort. Our instruction 
was of an elementary sort, and we had really no guide in 
practice. No one spoke to us, no one told us of what 
they had found to be true. We were permitted to share 
in no other experience. What wonder if, left in the 
isolation and loneliness, we stopped praying when we 
found that our elementary practices got us nowhere? 
Does not this sort of treatment of religion as a purely 
private affair, so private and secret that we do not dream 
of sharing it, account for a great deal of the abandon- 
ment of religion by the young? Their need of society 
and mutual support finds no satisfaction in their religion. 
They are unable to make anything out of it by them- 
selves. They share the common feeling that you really 
mustn’t speak about such things, so they lapse and dis- 
card religion as a failure. When I look back at the 
environment of Church life in which I was brought up I 
can only wonder at the mercy of God which enabled me 
to preserve any sort of religion at all. I was surrounded 
by good and pious people, true Churchmen according to 
their light, but it was a dry Churchmanship, out of which 
all the sap had evaporated. No one, so far as I know, 
ever mentioned personal religion or practices of piety. 
One went through a routine of Morning Prayer on Sun- 
days and on the first Sunday of the month one was sent 


130 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


out of the church at communion, as from a thing which 
in no wise concerned children. Teaching was limited to 
a recitation of the Catechism, with no application. How 
many thousands have gone through this routine and in 
the end found it impossible and given it up? 

Now, with the most custom-bound people in the world 
certainly the exercise of a religion which stresses its 
corporate character must mean some opportunity for 


corporate action, the development of a devotional system — 


which shall bind individuals together with a sense of 
their unity in Christ. The Mass naturally is the founda- 
tion and the starting point of such a developed system, 
but the circumstances of modern life need a working out 
from that basis to a free association in common worship. 
The day offices of Morning and Evening Prayer do not 
supply this need. They are too cold, too lacking in per- 
sonal appeal, too little calculated to call out devotional 
fervor, and unless we are in the eighteenth century atti- 
tude of dislike of “enthusiasm,” we feel that devotional 
fervor is an attitude of soul that we need to create. 
The old lady who “joined the Episcopal Church” because 
she liked the Litany was on the right track. She had 
found something which enabled her to express her need 
of a common worship. Protestants have found even 
their free services inadequate to satisfy that need and 
have created the prayer meeting and the freer devotional 
meetings which are so popular in connection with Young 
People’s Societies of one sort or another. The Roman 
Church has created great varieties of “devotions” which 
quite plainly supply a popular need. The members of 
the Churches of the Anglican Communion cannot be 
differently constituted from their neighbors. They have 
the same spiritual needs, but there is small effort made 





es —— 


THE COLLECT 131 


to supply them. We do hear of occasional efforts of 
popular vespers and musical services, for instance. But 
plainly these are “attractions” rather than devotional ap- 
peals. There is a section of the Church which seems 
possessed with the notion that if you can sufficiently jug- 
gle with the Psalter people will come to church in crowds. 
But I do not believe that the evidence shows that the 
average man is hankering after a new selection of Psalms 
or Evening Prayer with one lesson left out. He is no 
doubt an independent person who will only go to church 
when he finds there what he wants. I do not believe 
that experience shows him to want such things. If he 
is looking for devotional expression he certainly does not. 

The prayer meeting, or some modification of it, does 
undoubtedly supply a devotional need. There must be 
many people in the Church whose spiritual experience 
would find expression and stimulus through such an 
agency. I have never been able to understand why 
that section of the Church whose interests and sympathies 
are distinctively Protestant has not developed along such 
lines. Is it because of an intense conservatism or be- 
cause there is a feeling that “sectarianism” is not quite the 
thing socially? These may be the reasons which pre- 
vent what seems a natural development, though they 
are hardly persuasive. 

On the other hand, for those who accept the Catholic 
position of the Church and believe that they are really 
one with the rest of Christendom, though unfortunately 
superficially divided, it would seem the most natural 
thing in the world to adopt Roman developments in the 
way of devotions. While we for centuries have lain 
fallow in the matter of public expression in devotion, 
never going beyond the limits of the Reformation 


132 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


formularies, the rest of the Church, East and West, has 
sought expression in a multitude of supplementary 
services and forms for public and private use, that testify 
to a remarkable and growing spiritual life, seeking, as 
all growing life must, ever new channels for its out- 
pouring. It would seem the most natural thing in the 
world, that we, realising our poverty, should draw upon 
our neighbors’ riches. Such devotions as are embodied 
in the many litanies and special offices, in Benediction 
and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, in the Rosary, 
to mention no others, are natural modes of expression 
to those who accept the whole Catholic faith in regard 
to the Communion of Saints and the Eucharist. Yet 
when anyone attempts to provide an outlet for the spirit 
of devotion and love to our Lord and the saints which 
is so deeply buried in the Anglican soul, one is met with 
howls of protest against Romanism which have echoed 
through Anglican circles for now these four centuries. 
It appears that time does not stale nor repetition vary this 
ancient cry. Occasionally the spirit of boredom that it 
produces drives some unstable soul to seek what they 
imagine will be peace and quiet in the fold of Peter. 
But it is better to stop one’s ears and to go on to the de- 
velopment of the spiritual life of the Church as best one 
may, and one may learn to tolerate both the Anglican 
reproach of borrowing and the Roman scoff of “aping,” 
if in the end one does win souls to a deeper spiritual ex- 
perience. In the meantime both cries bear testimony to 
the small hold that the fundamental virtue of charity 
has upon either vociferator. 

As a thing cannot be wrong simply because it is 
Protestant or Roman, recent or ancient, it is good and 
right if it fulfils a good and right purpose. I cannot 





THE COLLECT 133 


see how anyone can deny the primary need of means to 
develop the spirit of devotion among our people. I am 
willing to praise any helpful attempts in that direction and 
to assent to the use of means which are intended to 
further such ends, even when they are not means which 
appeal to me. And pending the development of “loyal 
Anglican” instruments for this end, I feel that I am free 
to make use of the devotional experience of my neighbors 
and have no hesitation in appropriating them. 

And it is well to remember in this connection that 
much that is characterised as recent or Roman is not 
really such. Notably, the Rosary and devotions to the 
sacramental Presence were in existence long before the 
Reformation, and it is difficult to maintain the Catholic 
character of the Anglican communion if we are to 
repudiate all that preceded the Reformation unless it 
were explicitly taken over in Anglican formularies. If 
those formularies represent the maximum of what is to 
be believed and practised, then I am afraid that any claim 
on the part of the Anglican communion to Catholicity 
must be abandoned, and a great many of us would have 
to reconsider our position. But if the Reformation 
formularies represent only a minimum and a minimum 
retained with difficulty under trying circumstances, then 
we are content to take the Anglican communion at its own 
valuation as certain provinces of the Catholic Church 
which through historical circumstances have become sep- 
arated from the rest. Under such a claim we can attach 
a meaning to the oft-repeated phrase “our Catholic her- 
itage,” and take it seriously and proceed to claim it. 

The value of such religious acts as the Rosary and sac- 
ramental devotions is that they present a vivid spiritual 
appeal and stir a spiritual response. They develop what 


134 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


we so sorely need, a feeling of our spiritual unity. We 
get here in a limited way what we get in the Mass, a con- 
sciousness of our immediate union with Christ and with 
one another, and especially, I think, with one another. 
Such services tend to abolish the feeling of isolation and 
to break down our individualism. Morning and Even- 
ing Prayer do not do that. Even their present advocates 
realise that there is a need of what they call “hearty” ser- 
vices as a supplement to them. But devotions draw 
people together and make them feel their essential one- 
ness. I do not here plead for any special devotion, 
though I confess my preference for those which have 
grown up in the Western Church in the course of cen- 
turies and embody an age-long spiritual experience. But 
I do plead for a more elaborate and flexible spiritual prac- 
tice and for greater tolerance of methods with which we 
are not ourselves perhaps in sympathy. Neither “dry- 
ness” nor “highness” are ideal expressions of Catholicity. 

The average Anglican parish, as I know it, has very 
little coherence. It does not really form a unit, but is 
rather a group of units arbitrarily and artificially brought 
together. They are like the atoms in a molecule, easily 
separated by the application of certain forces. They are 
held together by a kind of loyalty to an institution, but 
have no mutual attraction. The attempt to weld these 
groups into a true unity is one which is beset with great 
difficulty, and I am convinced is impossible when con- 
ducted, as in the past it has uniformly been conducted, 
on social lines. There is small use in attempting to bring 
together socially people of quite different social habits 
and experiences. I do not believe that it is impossible to 
unify them spiritually. However socially diverse people 
may be, they can find a common ground in spiritual ac- 


THE COLLECT 135 


tion and can find themselves growing together in spiritual 
experience. I am convinced that a parish which at- 
tempts no social appeal and sets itself to the develop- 
ment of a consciousness of their union with our Blessed 
Lord and with one another, is on the only possible road to 
spiritual success. 

Not, of course, that one would at all deprecate or de- 
preciate or underrate the value of the set prayers of 
the Church. It is only that their value is a different 
value and needs, it would seem, supplementing by more 
intimate devotions. I shall have much to say a little 
later on the nature and value of the central prayers of 
the Eucharist, but one may say here of all the public 
prayers that they are framed as the prayers of a com- 
munity, and therefore in general terms, and are con- 
cerned with universal interests. It is well that we should 
be clear about this, and accustom ourselves to be at- 
tentive to the universal interests of the Christian and 
of the Church. It is these interests which primarily 
draw us to the public services. We feel our relation, 
not to the particular group of people, but to all Chris- 
tians scattered throughout the whole world. It helps us 
to get rid of sectarian bitterness and narrowness and to 
understand the meaning of the “Holy Church through- 
out all the world,” that we are not members of a sect, 
but of the Body of Christ, and are vitally interested in 
all its manifestations. We long for the time when there 
shall be a clear way to unity among Christians. At least 
these are our ideals. Unfortunately we do not always 
live up to them. We are often ready to consent to the 
abstract while we are revolted by the concrete. I heard 
of some poor souls the other day (I have no doubt that 
they would enthusiastically have taken part in a day of 


136 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


prayer for the reunion of Christendom) who were vio- 
lently angry because in the church they attended the of- 
ficiant prayed for the Pope. Such an attitude is hardly 
consistent with a belief in the Holy Catholic Church, un- 
less we mean by that the Anglican Communion exclu- 
sively. But the Anglican Church, thank God, has never 
made any such exelusive claim, and even if it had, we 
have rather high authority for praying for our enemies. 

Our general and Catholic interests, then, are what we 
must expect that the formal and stated services of the 
Church will chiefly be concerned with. We shall have 
general confessions and general thanksgivings and pray- 
ers for the whole state of Christ’s Church Militant. We 
shall find the broad teaching of day and season collected 
for us in general statements. But we may also find 
room within the embrace of these general prayers to creep 
in with our own small and humble needs. After all, each 
one of us is a particular under the general. The general 
is not an abstract, but is the sum of many concretes. One 
likes to think of the worshipping congregation with at- 
tention fixed on the majestic flow of the liturgy and 
watching for the opportunity to make their own petitions 
part of the general offering,—to insert, as it were, in the 
crevices of the Mass their own individual needs. So the 
prayers go up,—those stately and formal prayers, splen- 
did in the decoration of the marvelous diction,—freighted 
with the detailed needs of our daily life. There, we feel, 
is all the diversity of the congregation melted and cast 
into the unity of the Body of Christ. 

And then one likes to think of those whose general 
needs are covered by these general interests, though all 
unsuspecting. The sweeping course of the Litany, for 
instance, or the prayer for all sorts and conditions of men, 


THE COLLECT 137 


—how they draw in and unfold the manifold needs of 
men, and as each prayer passes the lips of the priest, 
some soul seizes it and gives it a personal application. 
The life-line is thrown out to some unthinking sailor toss- 
ing on the sea, sleep is drawn to the pillow of the waking 
sufferer, a hand is stretched out to hold back the girl 
who is trembling on the edge of spiritual shipwreck, a 
touch recalls to sanity a careless man. We pray for 
those who would disclaim all need or wish for prayer. 
We pray for those who have no one to pray for them, 
and the priest at the altar is bearing before God all the 
needs that his work has made known to him. He prays, 


Let not one of these 

Be wanting in the day thou countest up 

The jewels in Thy diadem of saints. 

I ask not for the glories of the world, 

I ask not freedom from its weariness 

Of daily toil; but, Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, 
Let Thy omnipotent prayer prevail for them 
And keep them from the evil. In the hour 
Of trial, when the subtle tempter’s voice 
Sounds like a Seraph’s, and no human friend 
Is nigh, let Thy words live before Thee then, 
And hide Thy lambs beneath Thy shadowing wings, 
And keep them as the apple of Thine eye. 
My prayers are ended if Thy will be done 
In them and by them. Till at last we meet 
Within the mansions of our Father’s home, 

A circle never to be sundered more, 

No broken link, a family in heaven. 


With our faithlessness and our stupid doubts about 
prayer we never know how we are injuring others and 
limiting the power of God. The severest limitation on 


138 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


God’s power to answer prayer is our own character. We 
pray as though we were going to answer the prayer our- 
selves; that is, we are chilled in our intercession because 
we cannot imagine how an answer could be given. But 
once we raise our imagination high enough to embrace 
God, doubts of prayer vanish. 

We come back to-the united prayer of the Body as the 
expression of a spiritual force. The answer to a great 
many questions raised as to answers to prayer is found 
in this thinking out of the fundamental axiom that prayer 
is commonly a corporate act and that its answer comes 
through cooperation. God no doubt acts directly in 
answering prayers, but far more than we have been ac- 
customed to think is human cooperation required. Nu- 
merous instances occur to us when we run over the field 
of prayer. We pray for missions, but we do not expect 
missions to be successful by the mere exertion of divine 
power. We pray for the conversion of sinners, but we 
understand that for their response to grace an opportun- 
ity is essential. In praying for the sick, a Catholic, at 
any rate, does not leave out of account medicinal means, 
and even on the basis of certain theories of psychological 
treatment, the response of the patient to the suggestions 
of the treatment would seem to be essential. 

What prayer in any case does is to bring about a re- 
lease of spiritual force, through bringing the human will 
into cooperation with the divine will. There is limitless 
spiritual force in the universe, but men have mostly cen- 
tered their attention on the discovery and use of material 
forces and are very backward in their knowledge of the 
spiritual. Only here and there some exceptional person 
is found with the knowledge and training which fits him 
to cooperate with God in the application of spiritual 


THE COLLECT 139 


power to life. Those exceptional persons we call saints 
and are tempted to regard them and what is alleged 
about them with suspicion as abnormal personalities. 
Probably the day will come when we shall understand 
them to be the perfecly normal product of the Church 
and their mastery of spiritual force as the result of their 
relation to God. Some day we shall wake up to the 
promises of God. Some day we shall understand what 
it means to be fellow-workers with Him. Then we shall 
understand the meaning and the power of intercession, 
of the spiritual energy which is in the Body of Christ. 
Then we shall wake up to the Mass—and what a glorious 
day that will be. 


4 Was 

iy 

Re! Ni 
i 


aI OTE) Ng 
y ie) tae i ‘e 


re 9 pea oc ie 
phen AE pel 


+ 





DE eHIGH DE MEDITATION 
THE EPISTLE 


After the collect or collects comes the most outstanding 
feature of the first half of the Mass,—the reading of Scrip- 
ture Lessons. In primitive times there was no fixed num- 
ber of lessons read, nor was their length determined. Then 
it became the custom to have three, the Prophecy (an Old 
Testament lesson: to» Christians all the Old Testament is a 
prophecy of Christ), the Epistle and the Gospel. Since 
the sixth century the number has been confined to two, the 
Epistle and Gospel with which we are familiar, except on 
a few days such as Good Friday and the Ember Days. The 
“Epistle” would be more accurately described as a “Lesson,” 
for it is not always from one of the Epistles. The Prayer 
Book has “epistles” taken from Revelation and Acts, and 
the proper Masses for the week days in Lent and on many 
saints’ days have “epistles” from the Old Testament. The 
appropriateness of the matter of the Epistles and Gospels 
is generally plain enough on the saints’ days and the great 
days of the Church’s seasons, but there appears to be no 
definite system governing the choice of those for ordinary 
Sundays. 

The new revision of the American Prayer Book provides, 
between Epistle and Gospel, that “Here may be sung a 
Hymn or an Anthem.” This rubric would restore, officially, 
one of the oldest features of the Mass, the Gradual. To 
alternate readings with Psalm or hymn-singing is a uni- 
versal and natural liturgical custom, derived from the wor- 
ship of the synagogue. Any missal which is complete gives 
the proper Graduals for all masses. They generally consist 
of two verses from the Psalter, two Alleluias, another Psalm 
verse, then a final Alleluia. The Alleluia, being an excla- 
mation of rejoicing, is omitted in Lent, on fast days and 
at requiems. On certain days there follows, after the 
Gradual, a hymn called the Sequence. Many authorities con- 
sider the Sequence for requiems, the Dies irae, the finest of 
all hymns. 


Let us listen to the words of S. Paul: 


Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present. 
world. 


Let us picture: 


Paul writing this last Epistle to S. Timothy. 

. There is a note of age and of weariness in this 
letter, as of one who feels that the end is near, and ex- 
periences relief in the feeling. “I am already being of- 
fered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have 
fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have 
kept the faith.’ And although S. Paul always shows 
great personal affection for his children in Christ, we feel 
here a great passion of love for S. Timothy and longing 
for his presence and sympathy. “I have remembrance of 
thee in my prayers night and day; greatly desiring to 
see thee.” “Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me.” 
And then this note of pain, “Demas hath forsaken me, 
having loved this present world.” ‘“Demas, my fellow 
labourer,” he had written once. There is no disappoint- 
ment like the infidelity of those whom we love. To 
find that those whom we trusted, who have shared our 
labours, and have seemed to share our ideals and our as- 
pirations, and whom we felt that we could lean on in the 
hours of discouragement when we needed help and sym- 
pathy, are unworthy and have left us to fight the battle 
alone—there is no pain like that. As we bring before us 
the picture of S. Paul at this crisis we seem to see the 

143 


144 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


hand tremble and the tears fall. What were bonds and 
imprisonment and all the rest of the trials to this! The 
thought of Demas, the fellow labourer, the man who had 
put his hand to the plow and turned back, would hence- 
forth be to him as a knife plunged into his heart. 


And consider, first, 


That the turning back of Demas was of the most in- 
tolerable kind. He had not become discouraged and 
fearful, as S. Mark had upon an occasion, and been re- 
pudiated impatiently as unworthy to share in the labour of 
the Gospel. He does not seem to have become bewild- 
ered in his faith and felt, in his perplexity, that he could 
not go on. He did not despair of the coming of the 
Kingdom which had been promised in terms of imme- 
diacy, and say, as some, “Where is the promise of his 
coming?” He fell away because he loved this present 
world. Loved it! How pregnant with meaning is that | 
phrase! We understand it, perhaps, only too well. All 
the luxurious, sensuous life of that many-colored world 
of Asia Minor called him. The brilliant crowds that 
filled its streets, the splendor of its entertainments, the 
rare beauty of its temples, the excitements of its games 
and its races, the public joy in the festivals of its Gods, 
the seductive beauty of its women, its baths, its wine, 
its perfume, its flowers—they stole upon his senses and 
filled him with the nostalgia of the world. Perhaps he 
looked at the passing show out of gloomy eyes as, wrapped 
in his cloak of an Apostle, he realised that he had cut 
himself off from all that. Then the possibility of going 
back again and being a man like other men came to him, 
and he dallied with the thought, and, it may be, pitied 
himself, and wondered whether his isolation was not mere 


THE EPISTLE T45 


foolishness. After all, neither he nor his master seemed 
to be making much impression on the world they sought 
to convert. To convert—what a wild dream it was to 
expect to convert this world that was going on unheeding 
of S. Paul and his mission! How could a handful of 
men convert this heedless, laughing, self-satisfied world 
he saw about him. And then came the moment when the 
inrush of temptation was too much for him, and he threw 
aside the marks of his Apostleship and plunged back 
into the world, realising that he loved it, determining to 
have it to the uttermost. I wonder what his end was? 
How did he meet that hour when his departure, too, was 
at hand? 


Consider, second, 


That the severity of the Gospel must have tried men 
then, even more than it tries them to-day. We have suc- 
ceeded in softening that severity; we have drawn thin the 
line that separates the Church and the world. We say to 
ourselves that we live in a Christian world, and that sep- 
arateness is no longer needful. We think of society as 
Christian, and that therefore it rules, its conventions, its 
habits, are Christian. At least, we need not scan them 
very closely. There is little, even in the life of the 
Church, to hold us to a stern sense of bearing witness to 
the Gospel of Jesus, to impress upon us the urgency of 
those who have to bear a message to a perishing world. 
We are able to love the world without our love being 
made a reproach to us save by a few fanatical preachers. 
Demas would not find it now necessary to leave S. Paul; 
he could remain without reproach in his ministry; he 
could be the idolized pastor of a devoted flock. The 
world—what is the world? Do we very well know? 


146 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Can we define it with any feeling of certainty? We feel, 
perhaps, that any definition in terms that S. Paul would 
have used, would be disastrous, would empty our churches, 
would leave us, if we accepted it, in hopeless isolation. 
Can we, perhaps, sympathise with Demas, as we imagine 
him gloomily watching some gay procession dancing 
through flower-strewn- streets, and feeling the passion of 
it all arise in his heart? Or is it S. Paul that we sym- 
pathise with as we think of his heart breaking over the 
loss of the child he had begotten in the Gospel, and now 
lost? 


Let us then, pray, 


To be delivered from the disquietude of this world. 
Let us pray to realise that we are pilgrims and strangers 
here, and seek a city. 

Grant us, O Lord, not to mind earthly things, but to 
love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed 
among things that are passing away, to cleave to those that 
abide; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. 

Incline our Heart, O Lord, unto Thy testimonies, and 
turn it away from beholding vanity: that Thou mayest 
detach us from the love of earthly things, and unite our 
affections to things above; through Jesus Christ, our 
Lord. 


THE EPISTLE 


The Church goes on day by day reading to its children 
the Holy Scriptures. It no doubt has in mind among 
other things thus to encourage and direct them themselves 
to read the Scriptures in private as an aid to the forma- 
tion of their spiritual character. But the indications are 


THE EPISTLE 147 


that the Scriptures are less read to-day than at any time 
since the art of reading became general. There are var- 
ious reasons for this decline. The Reformation with its 
theory of the “Bible only” and private interpretation gave 
a great impulse to private Bible reading. People had a 
comfortable sense of discovering their religion for them- 
selves and a pride in their discoveries in the field of reve- 
lation. Multitudes doubtless got great help and comfort 
through this direct and daily contact with the word of 
God, but the biblical studies of the last century have done 
much to dishearten this private searching of the Scrip- 
tures. The abandonment of the doctrine of verbal in- 
spiration undermined the “Bible only” theory and left 
the individual reader in a state of great perplexity. The 
plain man became conscious that something had happened 
to his Bible and was vaguely disturbed by ill-understood 
sermons and writings in which he was told that “the con- 
clusions of criticism’? had rendered the old view of the 
Bible untenable. The air the plain man had breathed so 
contentedly had become disturbed by the breezes of Mod- 
ernism and he now hears of the necessity of the “recon- 
struction of doctrine,” “the re-casting of creeds,’ and of 
the “abandonment of dogma” till his head is in a whirl 
and he is tossed by the waves of unknown seas far from 
his accustomed moorings. 

The movement of criticism was inevitable and desir- 
able, but the results could not help being disturbing. 
It was, I suppose, inevitable that many wild and unveri- 
fied hypotheses should be announced as “the assured re- 
sults of criticism.’ What was nothing less than a rev- 
olution in the plain man’s conception of the Bible could 
not take place without great unsettlement. It is perhaps 
inevitable also that destructive criticism should bulk much 


39 


148 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


larger and occupy more attention than constructive. The 
process of determining the provenance of the various 
books of the Bible had to precede the determination of 
their teaching, where the books themselves were their own 
authority. Where the Church was acknowledged as the 
authoritative keeper and interpreter of the books the case 
was somewhat differerit, but the churches of the Anglican 
communions have been so deeply influenced by the Prot- 
estant tradition as to inspiration of the Bible and so little 
influenced by their own announced theory, that we have 
felt the strain almost as deeply as the Protestant bodies. 

What is very much needed to-day, if people are to be 
brought back to a personal and devotional use of the 
Holy Scriptures, is clear and constructive teaching as to 
the use and place of the Scriptures in life to-day. In 
place of a theory of verbal inspiration and infallible text 
we need to see the Spirit of God working through the his- 
tory and literature of a people and deducing from it cer- 
tain lessons “for our learning.” We need to recognize 
that inspiration is the outcome of the action of the Holy 
Spirit on chosen souls, stimulating and guiding them to the 
performance of God-given work. We need to learn that 
it is what the Holy Spirit teaches and not the form of 
the teaching that is important for us, and we need more 
than all to understand that the Church is the witness and 
keeper of Holy Writ; nor is anything to be required to be 
believed as necessary to salvation but such things as the 
Church declares to have been committed to her in the 
Holy Scripture, delivered to her by God. 

We need to-day on the basis of our new understanding 
of the Scriptures a constructive treatment of them as 
a basis of theological and devotional study. Such a con- 
structive view will teach us to distinguish between the 


THE EPISTLE I49 


teachings of the Holy Spirit in matters of faith and mor- 
als and the temporary and local setting of that teaching 
which adapted it to the use of those to whom it was first 
delivered. We can easily dispense with the theory of in- 
spiration which regarded the early narratives of Genesis 
as history in favor of one which finds in them the ve- 
hicle of profound spiritual truth. We can recognize and 
use the teaching of the first chapters of Genesis that all 
things that exist are due to the creative power of God, 
without feeling bound to take the pictorial setting of the 
story as history and thereby raise questions as to the di- 
vergence of science and religion. We can disentangle 
the spiritual message of the prophet from the local cir- 
cumstances that determined its form, and we can do this 
with the greater readiness if we bear in mind constantly 
why it is that we are at all trying to understand the Bible. 

The Bible is a book of various meanings and _ uses. 
There is a dogmatic use of it. The sixth Article of 
Religion admirably says, “Holy Scripture containeth all 
things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not 
read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be re- 
quired of any man, that it should be believed as an article 
of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to sal- 
vation.” All we need to remember about this statement 
is that that which does the reading therein and the prov- 
ing thereby is not the individual Christian but the Church 
of God, which another article declares to be the witness 
and keeper of Holy Writ. The individual does not deduce 
his religion from the Bible, he receives it from the 
Church, and this is in fact no less true of Protestants 
than of Catholics. Both alike and of necessity are taught 
their religion in the first instance by the community in 
which they are members. The divergence comes when 


I50 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the adult undertakes independently to verify the teaching 
he has received. As Catholics then we have to ask in 
matters of dogma what the Church deduces from the 
Bible and tradition, but that does not justify us in laying 
away the Bible on the shelf as no longer of any use. The 
whole individual use of the Bible remains. It is used, 
that is, as a spiritual guide, as a source of spiritual 
energy. Wecan put it in this way, that the personal use 
of the Bible is not to teach dogmatic religion, but to 
stimulate personal religion. 

We study the formule of any science and seem to 
ourselves to have grasped their meaning, but we are not 
quite sure that we understand “how they work’’ till we 
see them in operation. The student is required not only 
to master a textbook of chemistry but to go into the 
laboratory and repeat the experiments which are em- 
bodied in the formulz. No one could get a license as an 
air pilot, or a chauffeur on the basis of book knowledge. 
He must show that he can handle the machine. Still 
less can anyone be regarded as a convinced Christian on 
the basis of his knowledge of theology. He must have 
learned the practice of the Christian life. The Christian 
life, like any other life, is learned by living, but the 
process of living is vastly aided by the study of how other 
people live, and here we reach one of the greatest values 
of the Bible for the individual. The Bible is a book of 
spiritual experience. It is a case-book of the spiritual 
life. I fancy that there are very few spiritual cases 
which cannot be studied in its pages, and for the pur- 
poses of devotional study it is a small matter just how 
they are presented, whether in the way of old folk-tales 
which have been worked over and re-cast by spiritual ex- 
perts for the purpose of bringing out spiritual lessons, or 


THE EPISTLE 151 


whether they are selected narratives of a nation’s history. 
We can learn equally well from the story of the Tower 
of Babel and from the history of Absalom. In either 
case what it is important for us to do is to catch the 
point of the teaching which determined the inclusion of 
the story in the Bible and entitled it to be called inspired. 

It is especially in regard to the Old Testament that we 
need to revise our method of approach. We have to 
get it very clear to us that our business with it is the 
study of religious experience. The record of God’s 
dealings with man is also of necessity a record of man’s 
dealings with God. When we have ceased to look in the 
Old Testament for science and general information, and 
have come to look for spiritual truth, we shall once more 
find the Old Testament an illuminating book. The early 
ages of the Church found it of great use because they 
were able to see in it profound spiritual meanings clothed 
in symbolism and allegory. The modern world dried it 
up by trying to find in it an anticipation of modern 
knowledge. We shall open its treasures once more when 
we go back to some version of the ancient use. Read as 
an interpretation of spiritual fact there is no more pene- 
trating story than the Genesis story of man’s creation and 
fall. Read as passages illustrative of the guiding and 
working of Providence in human history, the whole story 
of the Kings of Israel and Judea springs into life. There 
is hardly a page of the Prophets, or a line of the Psalms, 
which does not glow with spiritual meaning and vibrate 
with spiritual energy. We are losing an immense treas- 
ure by permitting our aproach to it to be blocked by 
critical questions which have no bearing at all on its per- 
manent and present value. What we greatly need at 
present is some new constructive treatment of the Old 


152 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Testament which will emphasize its present value as an 
interpretation of spiritual experience, both national and 
individual. 

And especially should this reconstruction bring out the 
intimacy of the connection between the Old Testament 
and the New. Not simply as it has been drawn out in 
the past, as a connection between prophecy and fulfill- 
ment, though I believe that that connection is still to be 
stressed and has not been negatived by any result of 
scholarship; but I would have the fact emphasized that 
there is a vital connection between the two volumes in 
the persistence and continuity of spiritual experience. 
From the beginning of the Old Testament story to the 
coming of our Lord there is an experience of God which 
grows and unfolds in meaning as time goes on. The 
elementary experience which is reflected in the patriar- 
chal stories passes into the deeper experience that is 
visible through the checkered story of the Kings, and so 
passes on into the spiritual depths of the Prophets. But 
even this splendor of vision is not the end. The Psalms 
are a spiritual handbook that we can use freely to-day af- 
ter so many centuries of Christian experience, and there 
are passages in the Apocrypha, especially in the books of 
Wisdom and Ecclesiastes, of unsurpassed splendor and 
depth of spiritual comprehension. 

A study of the spiritual experience of the Old Testa- 
ment and of the Apocrypha in something like chronolog- 
ical order reveals the fact that the vital link of connec- 
tion between the old and the new order, between Israel 
after the flesh and the new Israel after the spirit, was not 
the continuity of the state, that was but the framework 
which held together the society in which the purpose of 
God was working, a shell which perserved the kernel, 


THE EPISTLE 153 


but the tradition of spirituality which was handed on 
and developed by the faithful remnant in Israel. Such 
faithful devotees of Jehovah naturally make little impres- 
sion on the student of political and social movements, 
but under all such movements we feel their presence and 
their preservative energy. They become vocal now and 
again in the passages of a prophet or the stanzas of a 
psalm. Evidently they were the support and comfort 
of the prophets in the fulfillment of their God-entrusted 
ministry, but their names are rarely written in history. 

That does not matter that their names are unrecorded. 
They are those who, pleasing to the Lord, “spoke often 
one to another: and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and 
a book of remembrance was written before him for them 
that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name. 
And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in the 
day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them 
as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.” They 
are all those whose names come to be written “in the 
book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of 
the world.” 

We are right in saying, are we not? that they are the 
vital link between the old and the new. We see them 
clearly when we close the volume of the Apocrypha, 
looking forward with eager eyes and burning faith to 
the advent of the Kingdom of God. After all the 
centuries of waiting, when hope had died in so many 
hearts, they are sustained by their utter trust in the 
promises of God. Other things might fail, the promises 
could not fail. The kingdom in which they hoped might 
pass away; the priesthood which should have sustained 
them might become worldly and corrupt; the very house 
of David might vanish, but the presence of God remains. 


154 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


They could not understand how or when the promises 
should be fulfilled, but they were sure that in God’s 
time they would come to pass. The time shall come, the 
last days, wherein “the mountain of the Lord’s house 
shall be established on the top of the mountains, and 
shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow 
into it.” There would a morning break when there 
should come forth out of Bethlehem Ephratah one that 
should be the long expected ruler of Israel whose goings 
forth “have been from old from everlasting,’ one of 
whom it had been promised “unto us a child is born, 
unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon 
his shoulder: his name shall be called Wonderful, Coun- 
sellor, The Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the 
Prince of Peace,” 

When we open the volume of the New Testament we 
find them still waiting with that indomitable patience 
which only the promises of God can create. These are 
they who, born in the old order, unite it with the new. 
They are an inconspicuous group, these faithful in 
Israel, these righteous men and women waiting for the 
redemption of their nation. We easily miss their sig- 
nificance, so unobtrusively do they pass through the 
pages of the holy story. They have all the humility 
and meekness of those whose lives are hid in God, whose 
sole devotion is the will of God. Watching—that is the 
account of them. Believing—that is their essence. 
They live obscurely about the Temple, attracting little 
notice, perhaps an occasional smile of pity from Scribe 
or Pharisee or Priest. But their day of triumph came— 
the day when Mary and Joseph brought unto the Temple 
the child Jesus, “to offer a sacrifice according to that 
which is said in the law of the Lord.” And the old 


THE EPISTLE 155 


Simeon took the child in his arms and sang Nunc Dimit- 
tis. That was the day of their triumph. They had 
watched and waited until the end and could indeed de- 
part in peace. 

I think that we need always to be reminding ourselves 
that God works through men. That His purpose can 
only be fulfilled when it finds a point of contact, of sup- 
port, in human life. What we call our waiting for God 
is in reality God’s waiting for us. The Incarnation 
waited till the fullness of time came and then “God 
sent for His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 
to redeem them that were born under the law, that we 
might receive the adoption of sons.” The time came and 
the woman was ready and the purpose of God was ful- 
filled and His work advanced a further stage. 

The use of the Old Testament is to lead us up to this 
stage and its purposes, and when we open the New 
Testament we find that its earliest writings are certain 
Epistles and that a large part of the volume consists of 
letters written in the course of the first Christian century 
and later collected and read to the faithful when they 
assembled for worship. It is from these letters that the 
Church reads to us day by day at the Holy Eucharist. 
These letters again, and this is their deep significance, 
grow out of the experience of the followers of Christ. 
They are thrown off hot from the hearts of their writers. 
They reflect their day by day experience of Jesus. They 
are filled with the touch of Him on the life of His mis- 
sionaries, who go to their labour in full consciousness that 
they go not only for Him but with Him. They glow 
with love and zeal and hope, and to us, after so many 
centuries, they still bring word of life. 

We may take the Epistles then as representing the 


156 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


earliest stage of Christian experience, inasmuch as it was 
the stage of the foundation of the Church, and the writers 
intensely under the influence of the Holy Spirit. It 
represents a level of understanding, of appreciation, of 
revelation, that is unique to a degree. Yet their experi- 
ence is on the lines of all true spiritual experience; is 
not so removed from our experience as that we are un- 
able to understand it or to learn from it. 

Christian experience differs from all previous experi- 
ence in that it is essentially the experience of the risen 
Jesus. As we study the writings of S. John we are 
struck by the fact that his experience of our Lord dur- 
ing the years of the ministry has been illumined by his 
later experience in such wise that his understanding of 
our Lord is marvelously grown beyond that of the 
earlier Gospels. And when we turn to his Epistles we 
are at once struck by the note of immediate serenity that 
characterizes them. To take but one point, the constant 
recurrence of the expression, “We know.” The experi- 
ence of Jesus has reached the point of direct knowledge 
of Him. It was led up to by the testimony of others, but 
is ended in utter personal surrender. In other words, S. 
John has achieved the mystic experience and assumes it 
in those to whom he is writing. See this influence in his 
own words, “And hereby we do know that we know Him, 
if we keep His commandments. He that saith, I know 
Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and 
the truth is not in Him. But whoso keepeth His word, 
in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby we 
know that we are in Him.” “Beloved, now are we the 
sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall 
be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be 
like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” “We are of 


THE EPISTLE 157 


God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not 
of God heareth not us. Beloved, let us love one an- 
other; for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is 
born of God and knoweth God.” But it is needless to 
multiply quotations. The whole of S. John’s writings 
testify to the possession of this mystic knowledge. 

If we turn to S. Paul the same thing is found more 
plainly true. S. Paul rarely alludes to our Lord’s earthly 
life but he makes His resurrection the cornerstone and 
starting-point of his teaching. His own knowledge of 
Him was derived directly from personal communion with 
Him ; it is grounded in his mystical experience. He has 
a passionate attachment to our Lord which we could 
understand in one who had been His follower and disci- 
ple, but which is strange if we conceive of S. Paul as 
having only a historical connection with Him. It be- 
comes plain, however, as we study the Apostle’s teaching, 
and find him resting our true knowledge on the fact of 
our incorporation in Christ. His characteristic expres- 
sion, “In Christ,” is the key to his own understanding of 
Christ. It is a knowledge coming no doubt from the 
testimony of witnesses, but illumined by his own per- 
sonal experience of the life of union. I am not thinking 
now of his claim to direct revelation but rather to that 
understanding of the meaning of Jesus and of the 
Christian’s necessity of gaining a personal experience of 
Him. Such expressions as “Our conversation is in 
heaven,” “Your life is hid with Christ in God,” “If any 
man be in Christ he is a new creature,” are sufficiently in- 
dicative of the nature of his relation to our Lord and the 
source of his knowledge, and with him, as with S. John, 
this is no mere personal attainment, not the outcome of 
his official status as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, but the 


158 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


same experience is assumed to be the easily attained 
experience of every Christian man and woman. 

The study of the Epistles then becomes of importance 
to us in that they are a manual of the spiritual life. 
Many hundreds of books on the nature and meaning of 
the spiritual life and of the methods by which it may 
be cultivated have been written since these Epistles. 
Many of them are very wonderful books which the 
Church can ill spare, but they have not superseded the 
Epistles as the primary manual and the most penetrating 
comment on the life and teaching of our Lord. What- 
ever else the seeker for the way of holiness reads and 
studies he must read and study these, and read and study 
them not once or twice but continuously all his life. 
There is no possibility of exhausting them, no danger that 
they will become worn or stale. Their depths are in- 
exhaustible because their subject is Incarnate God. 

As one result of any prolonged study of S. John and 
S. Paul we should reach the certainty that the Christian 
religion is a mystical religion. It has, no doubt, other 
elements which have to be taken account of. It is both 
institutional and dogmatic; but when one looks at it from 
the point of view of one who seeks the way to a knowl- 
edge of God and communion with Him it is the mystical 
element that is important. By mystical religion I mean 
a religion of which the essence is that it effects a union 
between the creature and the Creator, of such a nature 
that the creature may directly know and experience God. 
In the Christian religion the dogmas, institutions, sacra- 
ments, all have this end, that they create and sustain this 
life of union. Christ became Incarnate that He might 
bring us to God by the way of incorporation in Himself. 
And the aim of the instructed Christian is so to develop 


THE EPISTLE 159 


this life of union with Christ that in the end he may know 
even as he is known. 

Ruskin says somewhere, “I do not wonder what men 
suffer, but I do wonder at what they miss.” One often 
thinks of that when one sees people who are in earnest 
in attempting to lead a truly Christian life missing so 
much of the help and guidance that is at their very hand. 
Truly the Scriptures of God are still hid treasure to the 
mass of even devout Christians. Of ordinary Bible read- 
ing one may have a very poor opinion, but it remains 
true that here in this book which the Church hands us 
for our learning is the one competent manual of the 
spiritual life. It would not in any degree depreciate the 
marvelous devotional literature of the Church. It is an 
indispensable help to spiritual wisdom, but this wisdom 
is a derived wisdom and we would do well to study it, 
not as a substitute for, but as a comment on, the revela- 
tion of God in the Scriptures. We treat the Bible too 
much as a record of the past, a past which however in- 
teresting and important is still the past, and remote in 
most respects from us. But the chief function of the 
Scriptures is not to record the past but to influence the 
present; or it records the past as a means of influencing 
the present. The appeal of Scriptures is a present ap- 
peal, an appeal to the hearts and souls of men in every 
generation. It puts before them noble deeds and in- 
spired thoughts to stimulate them to make history, not 
simply to consider it. We lose the chief purpose of the 
Scriptures unless we feel them to contain a present ap- 
peal to action, unless we find in them a stimulus to love. 

If we are to study to any purpose we must ourselves 
try to acquire the “mind of the Spirit,” to accustom our- 
selves to regard life as a set of spiritual interests where- 


160 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


through we are developing a spiritual character. We 
overstress the importance of the immediate and the ob- 
vious. The front page of the daily paper seems to us 
to concentrate the interests of life that it is of immediate 
importance for us to consider, but these are passing in- 
terests. Even to-morrow the front page will present a 
different appearance. » There is nothing like the front 
page of the paper to teach the lesson that the things 
that are seen are temporal, whatever it may teach about 
the eternal things. After all, the eight-hour day, and 
the high cost of living, and the vital issues of the political 
campaign, are passing interests. A century hence his- 
torians will dig them up from dusty receptacles and serve 
them up to classes of bored students. But the spiritual 
interests are permanent. The Real Presence of our Lord 
in the Sacrament of the Altar is a vital interest in all 
times and we cannot conceive of a generation to which 
its interest will be simply archeological. The action of 
the Holy Spirit on souls will always be central to men 
who conceive of themselves as immortal. 

These are the interests of the Epistles of the New 
Testament and we turn back to them to study them 
because there we find the Spirit acting not only as a 
revealer but as an interpreter. The only man who can 
speak with authority in spiritual matters is the spiritual 
genius. It is through insight, given through our spirit- 
uality, that we understand the natural world, man, the 
Scriptures. It 1s man’s contact with the Spirit that gives 
him his perception of spiritual values, and enables him 
to speak with spiritual authority. Those who attempt 
to interpret religion, while denying religious truth, are 
like a deaf man setting himself to interpret a symphony. 
All he hears is an occasional drum beat or blare of the 


THE EPISTLE 161 


bass. We turn to the Apostles because we find in 
them spiritual genius, a developed knowledge of the word 


of God on which they have acted and which they can 
interpret to us. 


We a Nee 
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Ny: 

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Ney uN i Rio 


by) ih Noon 





THE NINTH MEDITATION 
THE GOSPEL 


The Gospel, being the very words of our Lord, comes last 
of the lessons from the Bible, in place of honor, and its read- 
ing is prefaced by prayers and ceremonies showing its im- 
portance. The missal is carried to the north end of the 
altar. The celebrant bows low at the center and says a 
prayer asking God to make him worthy to recite His holy 
words, and to bless him. Then he goes to the missal, greets 
the people with “The Lord be with you,” and signs with the 
cross the beginning of the Gospel for the day and his own 
eyes, lips and breast, and proceeds to read. At high Mass 
the Gospel is read by the Deacon, it being fitting that the 
highest of the assistants should perform the highest office 
after that of actually consecrating, and there is a formal 
procession with, cross, lights and incense. In the early days, 
when every Mass was a high Mass and the Bible lessons 
always read by assistant ministers, it was the custom to read 
them from ambos or pulpits. As they were read to the 
people the reader faced the congregation. Then came the 
development of low Mass, where everything is done by the 
one minister, and the awkwardness of turning and holding 
a large book naturally resulted in the reading being done 
from the book lying on the altar. However, even at low 
Mass, the book is placed diagonally for the Gospel, and the 
celebrant stands as nearly as possible facing the people. The 
custom of preaching a sermon at some point in the Mass, 
especially on Sundays, dates back to apostolic times. 
Normally the sermon was a commentary on the words of 
the Gospel, and so, quite naturally, it followed the reading 
of the Gospel. The Creed, when it was finally introduced 
into the Mass, was regarded as an expansion of the Gospel, 
and so the sermon often followed the Creed,—as we have it 
directed in our Prayer Book. 


Let us listen to the Word of God: 


And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose 
name was Simeon; and the same man was just and 
devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. 


Let us picture: 


HE life of Simeon. It was passed, we gather, for 

the most part, in the Temple of God. For years 
he had been praying there, in patient hope. Huis soul was 
nourished by the promises of God—the promises made 
unto the Fathers. They were to him the surest things 
in all the world, and he waited patiently for their fulfil- 
ment. Others like himself, he knew, had been waiting 
through the centuries, and the fulfilment did not come; 
but God could not fail, and so hope did not fail. We 
can imagine the conversations that went on in the 
precincts of the Temple between Simeon and Anna and 
others like them, conversations filled with the hope and 
joy of believing. We think of them pouring over the 
promises, trying to gain some new insight into them. 
One and another of the just and devout died without 
seeing the fulfilment; but the others hoped on, and 
filled the long days with their prayers. Then there came 
a day when to Simeon the light broke: “It was revealed 
to him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death, 
before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.” What a wonder- 
ful day that was; we think of him “going softly” after 
that with a new joy hidden deep in his heart. Others had 

165 


166 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


waited in the same faith as he—and had died waiting; but 
he was to see. That was God’s great gift to him. And 
then one day the Temple doors opened, and a Maiden- 
mother came in bearing a Child. Picture Simeon hold- 
ing Incarnate God in his arms, and singing, “Mine eyes 
have seen thy Salvation. 


Consider, first, 


How large a part hope plays in our lives. It is the 
sustaining virtue. How much of the energy that we put 
into living is called out by our hopes. That power to 
go on from day to day under discouraging conditions, to 
face anew a task in which we have repeatedly failed, to 
endure the sense of one’s own shortcomings and one’s 
incompetence in dealing with the problems that fall to 
one—that is the power of hope. How well chosen is 
the symbol of hope—the anchor, that which may be relied 
on to hold us when the storms of life have shattered all 
else, to hold us so that we may ride out all storms. But 
it must be an anchor “‘within the veil,’ which has laid 
fast to the promises of God. These old saints that 
passed their lives within the House of God, to them hope 
had become almost vision; the veil might break at any 
moment, as it did to Simeon, and they see the reality. 
Indeed it is in the House of God that the clouds of our 
perplexities most often break; it is at the side of the 
Altar, as we offer the incense of our prayers, that the 
angel appears. Hopes that are founded on the promises 
of God unfold into visions as we meditate there. But 
our hope may be so strong that we may dispense with 
vision, so strong that the promise of God has become to 
us the vision of a will that can never disappoint us. Con- 
sider the serenity of a life that accepts the promises of 


— ————— 


THE GOSPEL 167 


God as being sure in their fulfilment; that goes on to 

build life on them with no shadow of doubt or fear. 

They are so rich, those promises of God, and so mani- 

fold, they so touch all our lives, in all their circumstances, 

that the life of the Christian ought to respond to them 
with vivid joy. 


Consider, second, 


That the Treasure House of God’s promises is the 
Gospel. The Christian’s hope has foundations broader 
and deeper than the hope of a Simeon or an Anna could 
have. It is still, you say, but the Word of God? Yes: 
but not the Word spoken by Psalmists and Prophets, but 
the Incarnate Word, God manifest in the flesh. In the 
Gospel we are taken into the very heart of God’s pur- 
pose for us and our eyes are dazzled by the splendor of 
the promises that are made. All eternity unfolds before 
us as the field of our action, all the hosts of heaven are 
displayed as our fellow-workers, Incarnate God himself 
summons us to His side and calls us His friends. We 
have felt our souls thrill responsive to that summons, we 
have been caught up into the full tide of His resurrection 
life, and are sent forth in the might of His Spirit to the 
work of His Kingdom. The earnest of our inheritance is 
the basis for new hopes for the future,—what the power 
of our endless life may be we can only partially know. 
Consider how little we have as yet drawn on the power 
of the Gospel—that we have but touched the fringe of its 
promises. What power over life the Spirit will have 
when men finally yield to it, not one here and there, but 
in consecrated armies, we cannot imagine. But the very 
thought kindles our hopes, and we seem to see our- 
selves going out in that power to the conquest of the 


168 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


world. The promises of the Gospel for this world will 
only be seen in their fullness when redeemed humanity 
becomes sanctified humanity, and the Kingdoms of the 
world become the Kingdoms of God and of his Christ. 
In the meantime we look into the future with eyes that 
gleam with hope. 


Let us, then, pray, 


For the fulfilment of the Gospel in the coming of the 
Kingdom; let us pray that we may so take our place in 
the Kingdom now, that we shall delight in its triumph 
hereafter. 

We beseech Thee, Almighty God, let our souls enjoy 
this their desire, to be enkindled by Thy Spirit; that being 
filled, as lamps, by the divine gift, we may shine like 
blazing lights before the presence of Thy Son Christ at 
His coming; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. 


THE GOSPEL 


The Gospel at Mass is the presentation to us of our 
Lord’s life and teaching and is chosen with reference to 
the liturgical year. There is a curious lack of logic in 
the sequence of the variable elements in the Mass. The 
Gospel is really the presentation of the Scriptural teach- 
ing of the day, and the Epistle is chosen from the point 
of view of a comment on that, while the Collect gathers 
up the central thought and presents it to God in the form 
of prayer. But the sequence is the other way about 
and we have to study the whole to get our thought 
properly orientated. For example, I am writing this 
morning in the Octave of the Circumcision, and the 
Gospel I read at Mass was the account of the circum- 


THE GOSPEL 169 


cision in S. Luke’s Gospel. The Epistle is S. Paul’s 
exposition of the relation of faith and circumcision, and 
the Collect prays that we may have the true circumcision 
of the spirit. 

Our Lord is the central Theme of the Gospels. They 
were written to keep His life and words fresh in the 
memory of the Church, and we read them to be refreshed 
and stimulated by the direct contact with Him that is 
possible through their pages. Such reading and medita- 
tion is not like ordinary reading, even devotional reading. 
We believe that there is something of a sacramental char- 
acter in the devout study of the life of our Lord. We 
believe that there is a special grace of the Spirit therein 
and that He there in one way fulfills our Lord’s promise 
that He should be our guide, and lead us into all the 
truth. 

There is another advantage to be gained from the study 
of the Gospels which is not gained from the study of the 
‘Creed, for instance. There is a vast difference in the 
ease and clearness with which we grasp an abstract 
statement of truth and grasp the same truth embodied 
in life and action put before us in illustration. Chris- 
tian truth is summed up in the formularies of the Church. 
We can study it there and gain an adequate understand- 
ing of it; but the impression actually made, its driving 
force and life, is not very great when assimilated in that 
way. A Creed makes small appeal to the emotions, and 
we human beings are moved by the emotions. Unless 
our feelings are stirred we act with slowness and diffi- 
culty. No doubt we like to think that we are primarily 
intellectual, that we are led to action as the result of 
thought and study; that in fact our conduct is controlled 
by purely rational motives; but most of that is merely 


170 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


intellectual pride. Our conduct is only to a small ex- 
tent rationalized, in so far, that is, as we have subjected 
the feelings to certain ideals of life, therefore it is that 
naked statements of truth make small appeal to us 
compared with the appeal that they make when em- 
bodied in action. Our intellectual assent is one thing, 
our response another. 

Herein lies the answer to the often asked question, 
“Why are there so many professing Christians who do 
not at all, or in a very limited degree, act as Christians in 
the ordinary affairs of life?’ How many that are like 
the boy in the parable who say to the Father, “I go, sir,” 
and go not; the thousands of regular attendants at 
church on Sunday who on Monday, in business or 
pleasure, show little enough signs of Christian influence 
in their lives. Are they the mere hypocrites that the 
world thinks them? Do they recite a creed and prayers 
in which they have no personal belief but which they 
think it 1s in some way advantageous for them to recite, 
either because of their social position or because of the 
impression that they want to produce on others? In a 
very limited sense that is true. A vestryman from a 
certain parish said to an acquaintance of mine not long 
ago, “Of course we do not believe any of this, but it is 
a good thing for most people to go to church. It keeps 
them in order.” But such cases are negligible because 
of their infrequency. The account of the matter in most 
cases is that no connection has been established between 
creed and conduct; that the creed, which is no doubt 
quite honestly assented to with the mind does not affect 
the emotions. The man’s conduct is controlled by what 
he feels, by self-interest, by pleasure, by companionship, 
and unless the rift is very wide indeed between belief 


THE GOSPEL 171 


and practise he is able to go on ignoring its existence. 
The divergence which impresses other people does not 
impress him because he is used to it. 

And therefore it is a problem of vast spiritual moment 
to produce an energetic contact between belief and action. 
Sermons try to do this by their emotional appeals. 
Ceremonial and music try for the same result in their 
own order. They would rouse to energetic action the 
sluggish feelings which are commonly brought to the 
place of God’s worship. This appeal to the feelings is 
not only desirable, it is vital and necessary if we are to 
have creeds in action controlling life. It is not true 
that such appeals are illegitimate or sensational in the 
bad sense. Our whole course in treating men as though 
their primary motives in action were intellectual has been 
a terrible psychological blunder. The rationalization of 
religion to the level of a Unitarian or of an Ethical 
Culture Lecture Hall only means the substitution for 
religion of utilitarian ethics. The instinct of the Catho- 
lic Church is always right, though the intellectual ground 
upon which writers try to account for it may in any 
case be wholly wrong. It is a right reading of human 
nature to make strong appeals to the emotions. ‘That is 
not to neglect whatever intellectual element there may 
be in man, but only to recognize its proper place and pro- 
portion. The energetic life of the Church has been 
largely occupied in the development of music, of art, 
of ceremonial because it knows that men and women are 
moved by these things. A history of the Church in 
action would be a history of a long series of popular 
devotions. It has been felt, and rightly felt, that the 
stated, formal services of the Church are not sufficient to 
satisfy the demands, and the legitimate demands, of our 


172 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


nature. So the instinctive genius of the race works 
constantly on the problem, “How make religion interest- 
ing?’ This is not a concession to the lower elements in 
our nature, it is a recognition of our nature as it actually 
is, a recognition that men are not to any great extent 
moved to action by intellectual appeals, but are moved 
by emotional appeals. Therefore according to their 
background of conviction you find, developed to meet 
the circumstances, revivals or missions, popular vespers 
or benediction, rallies or rosaries. They are all, how- 
ever, unconsciously based on the same _ psychology. 
“In the view of many of their exponents, emotion was a 
mere hindrance to the free exercise of Pure Reason, or 
again, according to some simply a form of confused 
thought. Such opinions cannot be too emphatically re- 
pudiated. The emotional life is certainly not subordinate 
to that of the intellect in respect to its origin, nor is it 
to be considered invariably so as regards its validity. It 
is in feeling that all values reside, and the life of feeling 
has a logic of its own, distinct from the logic of pure 
reason, and not necessarily inferior to it. Without going 
so far as to say, with certain modern psychologists, that 
feeling is invariably the controlling factor in its rela- 
tion to thought, we must urge that much of the best, and 
most effective thought is stimulated and sustained by 
underlying emotional tendencies, and that in many cases, 
if not in all, the action of feeling upon thought is very 
much more intense and decisive than that of thought upon 
feeling.” + 

Therefore, to go back to the Gospel, the naked state- 
ment of a Christian truth, as for instance our Lord’s 
power to perform miracles, is one thing, and the read- 


1 Brown, Psychology and Psychotherapy, p. 80. 


THE GOSPEL 173 


ing of the story of the cure of the paralytic let down 
through the roof is another thing. We find it necessary 
for ourselves to supplement and illustrate dogma by 
reference to the story of our Lord’s life, and it is not 
simply motive power that we are seeking, but vivid un- 
derstanding. It is quite possible to understand a defini- 
tion without understanding the thing defined. For ex- 
ample, we may take up a volume of spiritual theology and 
read a definition of humility. It seems perfectly clear. 
We understand all the words, and as they are put to- 
gether they make sense, but do we understand humility? 
I fancy not. And to learn about humility we look for 
examples of it. We try to see it in action. The best 
place to see it in action is the life of our Lord, so we 
turn there to know what humility actually means, and 
seeing it in our Lord we may come to love it and to desire 
it and to try ourselves to produce it. But I do not be- 
lieve that anyone ever became humble by learning defini- 
tions of humility. 

We find the whole positive Christian life as it ex- 
presses the divine ideal for man illustrated in the life of 
our Lord. To read the Gospel is to wander through a 
vast picture gallery where the spiritual life is illustrated. 
In the hall of some ancient palace you shall see the walls 
covered with a series of tapestries which recount in 
pictorial form the history of the ancestors of the present 
possessor. Imagine what it must be to a child to be 
brought up in such an atmosphere, to play daily in such 
a hall; to absorb all unconsciously the family history, not 
in dry narratives, but in glowing illustration. And we, 
God’s children, can, if we will, wander day by day 
through the tapestried chambers of the Bible story. 
We can gaze on one event in our Lord’s life after an- 


174. MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


other as the Church indirectly traces the course and 
meaning of the Christian year, as it presents to us the 
articles of our creed, or the items of our morals, and gives 
us appropriate teaching. We can turn to the pictures 
for stimulus to the imagination and the emotions. We 
read the dogma of God made man, but we see the angel 
come unto Mary with his “Hail thou that art highly 
favored, the Lord is with thee.” We are told the mean- 
ing of the Nativity, but we listen to the angels singing 
over the fields, and see the shepherds taking their way to 
the Child lying in the manger. We listen to the doctrine 
of the atonement, but we stand in imagination on Calvary 
and through the gathering darkness see the pale form of 
the Crucified, and hear the blood drops falling fast upon 
the ground. Then we understand, as we could not other- 
wise understand, that God is love, and are ourselves 
moved to love. 

How many have passed through such experiences in 
their Bible-reading and then, through the growth of 
worldliness, through absorption in business, through sin, 
have left the volume of the Gospels lie forgotten and 
dust-covered, and the pictures that had once filled the im- 
agination, stimulated action, fade into dim memories, 
roused it may be at times by the hearing of the Gospel 
read in Church on some rare occasion of attendance? 
One reads of buildings that once were holy—convents or 
churches now given over to secular usage, where there 
still look down from the walls upon the bustle of secular 
life faded pictures which had once lighted with splendor 
the refectories where Religious listened to the Word of 
God as they ate their simple meals; and the chapels which 
echoed with the chants of the Divine Office or of the 
Mass. How many souls there are which have become 


THE GOSPEL 175 


thus secularized, which once thrilled responsive to the 
words of the Gospel, and as they read the inspired nar- 
rative found an echo in their souls in tones of penitence 
or praise. Now they hardly raise their eyes from their 
daily occupation to the wall of memory, where a dim 
Christ still hangs crucified, or a penitent kneels at the 
feet of Jesus. Others there are in whom certain early 
habits linger to which they themselves would find it 
hard to attach any significance. An occasional bored at- 
tendance at church, perhaps an unprepared communion 
at Easter, because such a communion has become a part 
of the family routine and it is easier to go on than to 
break away altogether. I read of a church in Denmark 
where it was the custom of the members of the congrega- 
tion on entering to pause and bow towards a certain place 
on the wall. It was just a whitewashed wall like the 
rest of the walls of the church, and when asked why 
they bowed towards that special place they could only 
say that it was the custom. They and their fathers had 
always done so. Some curious investigator washed off 
the whitewash and brought to light a portrait of our 
Lady. The Reformation had covered it up but the 
peasants had continued to bow quite unreformed, and 
their descendants kept up the custom centuries after they 
had forgotten the reason. Perhaps there are white- 
washed Madonnas in our lives waiting to be discovered 
and cleansed: habits that wait to be rejuvenated and 
once more filled with life. We need to go back to the 
Gospel with its vivid pictures of Incarnate God minister- 
ing to men, and catch the present significance of that 
ministry as a ministry still carried on in the Church, 
which is His Body, carried on for us and awaiting our 
recognition and response. 


176 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


What we constantly need for the stimulation of our 
spiritual life is that our Lord should become real to us, 
as a person with whom we have the closest and most 
intimate relations. It is possible for us to put our Lord 
off to a distance as a character in a drama of the past. 
We try to look out across the centuries into that fancied 
world, where Rome ruled over men, and think what the 
ministry of Christ meant to those men. That is all very 
good. A “composition of place’ is a useful element in 
our approach to meditation, but it does not do to stop 
there, for we are not dealing with the character of the 
past, with an Augustus, or a Pilate or a Caiaphas, but we 
are dealing with One Who, though dead, is living for- 
evermore; One whose relation to our lives is not that of 
a recalled memory, but is intimate and vital. We recall 
our Bible scenes because by them we are aided to under- 
stand our own present action. We are dealing with a 
vivid, living personality, Who to-day is meeting and un- 
derstanding and solving to-day’s problems. It is then 
that the example of Christ becomes useful, as it throws 
light on the road we have to follow. The trained mind, 
I mean spiritually skilled in Gospel meditation, easily 
transfers the Gospel scene into Twentieth Century life. 
Some perplexing problem we have been trying to solve 
becomes clear in the light of our Lord’s life and action. 
We gain understanding, encouragement, hope, as we 
learn His method of treatment. The question He dealt 
with may seem utterly dead, but His solution will prove 
_to contain elements of permanent value. “Is it lawful 
to give tribute unto Cesar or no?’ Cesar is dead, and 
his empire passed away, but the world remains, and the 
Christian has to effect some adjustment between the 
world and himself. What do we owe the world? Ob- 


THE GOSPEL Tay 


viously the best we can give it, our full aid for its 
betterment. We owe it justice, whatever bears its own 
image and superscription; that much surely; but what 
belongs to God—no. Or we can aid our understanding 
of the problem by another of our Lord’s sayings. “Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The world in the 
sense of human society is our neighbor, the object of 
our love. Or again it is the man fallen among thieves, 
whom we, as the good Samaritan, rescue and attend as 
we may. ‘These are just passing glances, hastily caught 
lights, which nevertheless serve to show us _ plainly 
enough the bearing of the Gospel incidents on the life of 
to-day. The New Testament is no volume to be turned 
over to be rent in pieces in the controversies of contend- 
ing critics, but a living book, able now to aid our life, and 
to fill our souls with joy and gladness. 

I do not think that I am speaking only personally, but 
rather am touching an universal experience when I say 
that the Gospels of the Christian year come back to us as 
we grow older loaded with memories of the past. They 
recall, as we listen, not only scenes in our Lord’s life 
which we have sometimes tried to make vivid to us, but 
scenes in our own life, or strands in our own experience, 
which have become clearly interwoven with them. We 
listen to the Gospel and there comes stealing into the 
memory voices out of the past, scenes filled with our 
loves, our devotions, our ideals and our aspirations which, 
it may be, seemed as distant to us as the Gospel story 
itself but which in a moment at the sound of the well 
remembered words flash into present reality. It may be 
the face of an old priest whom we remember reading the 
Gospel, that arises before us; or there may come back 
to us a Sunday when we for the first time took in some 


178 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


truth which then seemed splendid and glorious to us, but 
of which the splendor and glory have faded with the 
passing of years. No, not the splendor and glory of the 
truth we now see, but of our appreciation of it. In 
the words of some parable we read the story of our own 
spiritual decadence and futility, and remember the days 
of our aspirations. Or it is the face of one loved, who 
used to kneel with us and receive the Bread of Life which 
comes back in the words we have talked over together. 
Truly the Gospel is a book of remembrance filled with 
the voices of the past. There are Gospels that come 
freighted with the scent of lilies or crimson of the roses 
and peonies, heavy with the scent of pine and laurel and 
wrapped in the odor of incense. One has but to close 
one’s eyes to hear the sound of bells drifting across water 
in the early dawn, or ringing sharp in the frosty winter 
morning. There comes the vision of some country 
church where the rising sun falls and flashes in flakes of 
blue and gold and crimson on the sanctuary floor, or of 
some vast and dusky interior, where a half-glimpsed 
figure of the Crucified broods in mystery over the silence 
of the dead. 

Such thoughts are far from fanciful, far from being 
the “wandering thoughts” which distract our devotions. 
Rather they weave themselves into the solemnity of the 
Mass and make a part of its offering, the deepest and 
holiest experience of our lives. The sacrifice goes 
heavenward bearing with it our tears and laughter, laden 
with the bitter of our penitence and the joy of our 
thanksgiving. “And here we offer and present unto 
Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies.” Yes, 
and all failures, and all the accomplishments, all the bitter 
waste and all the glad triumphs of the years that are 





cia THE GOSPEL 179 


past: the loves of those who are dear to us: the memory 
of our dead. Yes, that is what we mean by ourselves in 
this wonderful prayer where we are taken into the very 
offering to God. Ourselves, just as we are, just as we 
have come out of our tangled past, the resultant of all 
these experiences of the years. Ourselves, united now 
with the offering of the whole Church. Ourselves, with 
“all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Com- 
munion.” Yes, and especially all others who have been 
partakers with us, whose names now come back to us. 
May we all “be filled with Thy grace and heavenly bene- 
diction and made one body with Him that He may dwell 
in us and we in Him.” 

Is not that really what we mean by meditation on the 
Gospels, this intertwining of them with our own experi- 
ences in such wise that the events we are reviewing be- 
come of living significance to us? We take a fact out of 
the past, and as it were extract its essential meaning and 
relate that to our own lives. Thus we live in the Gospel 
and it all becomes very real to us and of constant help 
in dealing with the questions which arise from day to 
day. So doing, we find the world of the Gospel a liv- 
ing world, now interpreted to us by our own lives. We 
have found how to get past the artificial barriers which 
are raised to our understanding by changes in time and 
circumstance and language, and to translate the teaching 
of our Lord into the language of our own time, and to 
apply his solution of human problems presented to Him 
to those which are presented in our own experiences. 

And then again we reverse the process, and through 
the study of our own experience as illustrated by the 
Gospel stories we are able to understand better the ex- 
perience of our Lord and His followers. Principles are 


180 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


cleared up by the application of them to life. Other 
lives, however separated from us by surface peculiarities, 
turn out to be the same in essential qualities, in funda- 
mental dispositions, and therefore easily understood in 
the light of our own living. So we get at the secrets 
of spiritual living and the course of a normal spiritual 
development is made*clear to us. We no longer regard 
the normal life as one conformed to the contemporary 
standard of goodness, but as one conformed to a divine 
ideal, to the ideal of sanctity. The normal person in 
the Christian Church is not the sinner but the saint. The 
sinner no doubt is the usual person, but I fancy in no 
sphere is the average the normal. Certainly the standard 
of life presented by the Gospel is the life of God mani- 
fest in the flesh, and we are to “grow up into Him in 
all things which is the head, even Christ.” 

Our study of the Gospel must not ignore the history 
of the Christian Church. There is a method of Gospel 
study which treats them as practically complete in them- 
selves, and as the rule by which all else is to be under- 
stood. There are in the world of nature certain begin- 
nings which can not be understood by themselves, but 
only in the light of what they become. So the earliest 
stages of the teaching of the Church can only be com- 
pletely understood in the light of what it becomes. This 
is not in any degree to depreciate the Gospels, it is 
simply a rule of interpretation for us Catholics. To hold, 
for example, that our Lord’s words in the institution 
of the Holy Communion, “This is my body, this is my 
blood,” are to be understood in the bare symbolical sense 
is an impossible interpretation in the face of what in 
fact the Church has understood them to mean. The 
controversies of the last centuries as to the episcopate 





Se ee 


THE GOSPEL 181 


should be determined, not by doubtful interpretations of 
this or that passage in the New Testament but by the 
obvious fact that the Church everywhere found itself in 
the possession of the episcopate as the outcome of the 
life of the first generation of Christians. 

Any other standard of interpretation of the Gospel 
teaching than the life of the Catholic Church lands us 
in utter chaos, and to close the notion of inspired guid- 
ance of the Church with the teaching of S. John is ut- 
terly to deny our Lord’s teaching as to the office and work 
of the Comforter whom He promised to send, and whom 
He sent, in His name. His mission is to guide the 
Church into all the truth, and a large measure of that 
guidance must have been guidance to the understanding 
of our Lord and of His teaching. And that is in fact 
just what actually took place. The unfolding life of 
the Catholic Church was based on our Lord’s person and 
teaching as it was interpreted to the Church by the Holy 
Spirit, who is our Lord’s Vicar within it. In primary 
matters, that is, in matters of faith and order and mor- 
als, we do not turn to be instructed to the latest rational- 
istic commentary but to the life of the Church itself and 
its unfolding experience. On the basis of private inter- 
pretation of scattered texts of scripture you can prove 
almost anything you like by careful manipulation of the 
texts and by leaving out what you do not like. You 
can present a conception of our Lord and His teach- 
ing which may possibly satisfy the modern mind, but 
is perfectly different from any conception the Catholic 
Church has ever entertained. It would seem rather ob- 
vious that a religion that can be endlessly reconstructed 
to meet the “best thought” of each generation can be 
of small use to any generation. Unless the Christ of 


182 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the Christian religion is the same yesterday, to-day and 
forever, unless He is the Christ Who has been from 
the beginning worshipped in the Church, He can be of 
small interest to any human being who is in search, not 
of a theory, but of a Saviour. The only possible au- 
thoritative comment on the inspired Gospels is an in- 
spired, Spirit-guided Church. 

And the interpretation of the Church is not an intel- — 
lectual understanding of the meaning of texts and docu- 
ments, it is the experimental understanding of a Spirit- 
informed life. The Church has been the Gospel in 
action. It has put into action our Lord’s teaching. It 
did this even before a line of the Gospel was written. 
Its life was formed directly on our Lord’s person and 
teaching and the Gospels were written later as an inter- 
pretation of that. They are in a real sense the history 
of the experience of the Church. 

Taking a wider outlook, that is, one beyond the purely 
formal and authoritative decisions of the Church em- 
bodied in official documents, there is another sphere of 
Gospel interpretation which is of great importance to 
the individual Christian seeking to perfect himself in the 
spiritual life. When one finds, as one does speedily find, 
ithe needed guidance in the interpretation of our Lord’s 
life and teaching and in the method of its individual ap- 
plication, a Catholic Christian turns naturally to the ex- 
perience of those other members of the Church who have 
achieved success in the same faith. One turns, that is, 
to the writings of the great masters of the spiritual life. 
And how many there are scattered all along the cen- 
turies! Their writings, if collected, would form a vast 
library, which one could entitle the Library of Christian 
Experience. We begin of course with those writings 





THE GOSPEL 183 


which are inspired in a special sense, the writings of 
the New Testament other than the Gospels. Though 
some of these were written earlier than the Gospels, 
they are still a comment on our Lord’s teaching. They 
are all based on that, and as time goes on that experience 
is formally embodied in the growing experience of the 
Church. 

There is something vastly impressive and stimulating 
in the contemplation of this ever flowing stream of spir- 
itual understanding which has fertilized the fields of the 
Church through all the Christian centuries. The result 
is the growth and perfecting of what we can rightly call 
the science of the spiritual life, and this science of the 
spiritual life is exemplified in the lives of all the saints. 
What the Gospel means, drawn out in great detail and 
studied in all its bearings, may be read to-day in those 
books which treat of this science. How this science of 
spirituality works may be seen in the lives of sanctity 
which have enriched every century of the Christian era. 
Holiness is no dim occult process to which a narrow circle 
of the initiate is admitted. It is the possible possession 
of all men of good will. It is the Gospel in action in 
human life. | 


faveitl) 
meh 


bat wep 





THE TENTH MEDITATION 


Th by GREED 


All Liturgies now contain a Creed, and the one used most 
is our so-called Nicene Creed. However, the Creed is not 
an integral and necessary part of the Mass, but is a late 
interpolation. There have been many forms of Creed and 
of very various authority. No single one ranks as inspired 
or as a complete statement of the Christian religion. They 
originated as professions of faith before Baptism and for 
use in the instruction of converts. When heresies began to 
flourish the Creed came to be recited in the Mass as a pro- 
test. The custom originated in the East and does not appear 
in the West until the sixth century, in Spain, as a protest 
against the Arian heresy. From Spain it spread to Gaul. 
Rome did not insert the Creed in the Mass until the eleventh 
century. That it is not an essential feature of the Mass is 
plainly shown by the fact that it is not used at all Masses. 
The rule for its use is simple. It is said on all Sundays, 
throughout Eastertide, and on certain feast days as directed 
in the missal. These days include all the greater feasts and 
also the anniversaries of Doctors of the church. The 
Prayer Book of the Church of England appears to con- 
template the saying of the Creed at every Mass. Our own is 
more in accord with Catholic tradition, and provides that 
it may be omitted from Mass if it is said at matins, thus 
leaving us free to follow Catholic custom in the matter. One 
often hears the question, ‘“Why do they leave out the Creed 
at Requiems?” ‘The form of the question shows a misunder- 
standing. The Creed is never left out: on Sundays and the 
greater festivals it is inserted, and on such days it is not 
customary to celebrate a Requiem Mass. 





Let us listen to the words of S. Paul: 


I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. 


Let us picture: 
Gy PAUL before Cesar’s Judgment Seat. What 


. a tremendous contrast there is between these two 
men. In one is centered all the power and glory that 
the world can give; supreme over the lives and fortunes 
of millions of men, surrounded with all the splendor 
that the world thinks becoming to those who are exalted 
to be its rulers, nay, worshipped as a God, as the personal 
incarnation of the very genius of Rome itself in temples 
scattered over the Empire; he sits in judgment on this 
man of insignificant appearance, the obscure representa- 
tive of an obscure sect. And this other, this wandering 
preacher and missionary, what does he represent? To 
the eye of the Emperor, a despised race and a religious 
movement that is unintelligible. But to us, looking back, 
he represents the redeeming purpose for God for human- 
ity. And although his work for that purpose and his 
testimony to its power brought upon him the revilings of 
men and persecution, he gladly suffered these things, and 
made offering of his life. As they here confront each 
other, Emperor and Apostle, the cause represented by 
the Apostle seems already a lost one; but Rome and its 
majesty are but a memory and the power of the Gospel is 
stronger to-day than ever in the past. It still holds the 
promise of the future. To S. Paul it was a constant re- 

187 


188 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


proach that he had identified himself with a disgraceful 
movement; he protests more than once that he is not 
ashamed of the Gospel; rather, to him to confess Jesus 
and Him crucified was the highest honor. 


Consider, first, 


How much it cost the first Christians to confess a cru- 
cified Master. They forfeited their place in society, their 
friends, the respect of all who knew them. They seemed 
to be entering upon a mad course in taking up the re- 
ligion of one who had failed to make an impression on 
his contemporaries and had died a failure by a shameful 
death. The reproach of the Cross was a very real thing ; 
it was to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks fool- 
ishness. We get glimpses of the contempt in which the 
first preachers of the Gospel were held. No man any- 
where regarded them or thought twice whether they were 
being .justly treated or not. One does not realise, till 
one has worked it out with a concordance, how often the 
word shame occurs in the New Testament—how shame- 
ful a thing it was in men’s eyes that the Christians should 
desert the gods of their fathers and the customs of their 
country, and set themselves in opposition to the law of 
their state. What courage, what strength of conviction, 
what steadfastness of purpose was required to enable men 
to leave all and follow the way of Christ. Consider the 
Christian missionary approaching the gates of some un- 
visited city, sure that if anything at all were known 
there about his religion it would be by the Jews who 
looked on him as an outcast and traitor and would do 
all that they could to thwart his mission. See S. Paul 
preaching, surrounded by a threatening crowd which in 
a few moments will break into violence, and drag him 


THE CREED 189 


to prison or stone him and throw him out of the city. 
Hear the insults and abuse that are cast upon him. Hear 
him saying, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel.” 


Consider, second, 


That it costs us nothing to make profession of our re- 
ligion. Although the world loves it no more than it did 
in the days of Cesar, its opposition does not take the 
form of persecution, at least by violence. Our difficulty 
of confession comes not from the violence of the world, 
but from its seductions. The world has discovered that 
its power consists, not in its threats, but in its offers. 
It follows the line already marked out by its Prince, and 
offers its power and its glory to him who will worship. 
Those who to-day are ashamed of the Gospel, are 
ashamed of what seems its intellectual poverty, and of the 
strictness of its demands. The world is very tolerant 
of us, only it mingles its tolerance with something of con- 
tempt, as of those who are not quite abreast the move- 
ment of the times and are still clinging to worn-out 
methods of thought, or are not broad-minded enough to 
take all that they can get out of life, but are restrained 
by a foolishly scrupulous conscience. The god of this 
world is a very wise god in the things that apertain to 
his dominion, and knows that the spectacle of his vo- 
taries enjoying themselves to the uttermost with the 
pleasures of this life is a more powerful temptation than 
any force that he can wield. We would not like to be 
ashamed of the Gospel, but we are ashamed of being 
peculiar, or narrow, or prejudiced, or antiquated. There 
are a great many ways of being ashamed of the Gospel, 
and perhaps the worst of them is implied in the attempt 
to stand well with both worlds and consists in having 


190 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the form of godliness without the power thereof. It re- 
sults in the contempt of both worlds; for you can deceive 
neither God nor Mammon. 


Let us, then, pray, 


That we may confess Christ boldly and faithfully. 
That our light may so shine before men that no one can 
doubt of its source. That we may so confess Christ 
that he will confess us before his Father and the Holy 
Angels. 

Almighty and everlasting God, who has enabled Thy 
saints not only to believe in Thy Son, but also to suffer 
for His sake; extend Thy divine aid also to our weak- 
ness, that as they breathed out their happy souls for 
the hope of Thine everlasting mercy, we may at least 
attain it by a sincere confession of Thee; through Jesus 
Christ, our Lord. 


THE CREED 


It is often alleged against the use of creeds that there 
is no creed in the New Testament. That is hardly a 
fair statement. It is no doubt true that the creeds as 
we have them were of relatively slow development, but 
both the necessity for them and the elements of them 
are found in the New Testament. There is all through 
the New Testament, whether in the teaching of our Lord 
or of His followers, a primary stress upon the need of 
faith. Now faith in the New Testament is acceptance 
of God or of Christ as one to whom our lives can be 
committed, and whose word is the guide and director of 
our life. Faith is not a barren intellectual assent to 
propositions as true, but is an act of self-committal to 
God, into whose hands we surrender ourselves. “Father 





THE CREED IQI 


9) 


into Thy hands I commend my spirit,” is the supreme in- 
stance of faith in the Gospel narrative. But an act of 
faith for its completion requires two terms, the attitude 
of the man who believes and the revelation of the truth 
or of the mind of the person to whom he commits him- 
self. That is, the act of faith contains both faith and 
its object as necessary to its completeness. And this 
object is what is constantly described in the New Testa- 
ment (though the meaning is sometimes obscured in our 
translation) as the faith. 

This object of the individual’s belief, this faith, is ob- 
viously already in the New Testament a determined set 
of truths. We are told of the first disciples that they 
“continued steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine” ; and that 
that doctrine contained the statement of definite truths 
appears from all the apostolic sermons reported in the 
New Testament. S. Philip in Samaria “preached Christ 
unto them.” As the result of his conference with the 
Ethiopian eunuch wherein he “preached unto him Jesus,” 
the treasurer of Queen Candace asked for baptism and 
was met by the condition, “If thou believest with all thy 
heart thou mayest.” The eunuch answered, “I believe 
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.’ There the two 
necessary terms of faith are clearly expressed. S. Paul 
explaining the nature of the “righteousness which is of 
faith,” says (including again these two terms): “Because 
if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and 
shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him from 
the dead thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man 
believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth con- 
fession is made unto salvation.” Later, writing to S. 
Timothy, S. Paul exhorts him, “Hold fast the form of 
sound words which thou hast heard of me.” While it is 


192 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


true that no formal creed is found in the New Testament, 
yet the elements of a creed can easily be gathered by 
bringing together clear statements of fact about God and 
our Lord, which are scattered throughout its pages. 

The necessity of some sort of an elementary creed 
emerged on the day of Pentecost itself. The Apostles in- 
stinctively looked upon themselves as a body to which 
other human beings were to be added. This is almost 
the first statement about them. “And the Lord added 
to the Church daily those who were being saved.” The 
conditions of church membership (as we should say) 
were defined at once, and were clearly belief in Jesus 
Christ Who is risen from the dead, and Baptism. The 
creed as we have it followed in natural sequence from 
this earliest necessity. 

For what is the creed as we have it? It is primarily 
the unfolding of the statement that Jesus is the Christ. 
It flows spontaneously from the human necessity of 
thinking about things in which we are interested. Those 
who say there ought to be no creeds ought really to say 
that men ought not to think about their religion, or else 
(which they most likely would say) that by thinking 
we atrive at no authoritative conclusions but only at pri- 
vate opinions. But of that later. 

In the actual formulation of the creed we can, I think, 
determine two elements. In the first place there is the 
presentment of the apostolic experience, and in the second 
the gradual thinking out of what is involved in that ex- 
perience by the Church through all the centuries. 

The Apostles were confronted from the very day of 
Pentecost with the necessity of preaching. They had to 
account for the existence and the continuance of a move- 
ment which it would seem should have come to an end 





THE CREED 193 


with the death of their Master. They met the demand 
for explanation with the assertion that their crucified 
Master was risen from the dead and that they were sent 
out in His name to gather all men into a community 
which should perpetuate His teaching, and should, by 
union with Him, attain salvation. They were compelled, 
therefore, in the fulfillment of their mission, to make 
clear first to those, and then to others, what they meant 
by Jesus Christ. In other words, they had to formulate 
their experience of Jesus. This process of formulation 
can be traced through the Acts and Epistles, and results 
in a series of clear statements about our Lord and His 
work. The need of systematic statement was involved 
also in the need of instructing adults for Baptism. Those 
first baptised were baptised on simple profession of faith 
in Jesus, but that would soon be felt to be unsatisfactory 
and material for instruction would be gathered, and, we 
are justified in assuming, agreed upon. ‘Traces of this 
are evident in the Gospels. 

The second stage of creed development was reached 
when, after the death of the Apostles, and the first genera- 
tion of Christian teachers, men went on to think out 
further what was the meaning of the statements about 
our Lord which were the basis of instruction in the 
Church. Here the familiar human fact that men starting 
from the same premises reached different conclusions 
produced controversy as to the meaning of the deposit 
transmitted to them from the Apostles. Disputes and 
controversies were not slow in arising, and (what at pres- 
ent interests us) compelled the Church to define its teach- 
ing on matters which had been held without the need of 
formal definition having been experienced. From this 
point of view we may regard creed formation as the 


194. MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Church’s reply to the statements of false or mistaken 
teachers. In reply to statements that the Christian re- 
ligion taught thus and so the Church was compelled to 
reply by formal and explicit definition of the faith. It 
had to think out the full meaning of its own statements 
and actions. It had from the very first worshipped 
Jesus as God, but it took centuries to answer all the ques- 
tions that could be raised as to the meaning of that act. 
And the answers, as they were slowly arrived at after 
much discussion, formed the substance of the Creeds. 

When creed formation reached a certain stage the 
creeds were incorporated into the services of the Church, 
and became regarded as fixed and unchangeable formule. 
The difficulty of further expansion became great but it 
was not possible to stop men from raising questions and 
the process of doctrinal development had to go on. 

The results were no longer incorporated in formal 
creeds but they became a part of the formal and authori- 
tative teaching of the Church. This is a process which 
necessarily proceeds, because, even if it were desirable, 
there is no way of compelling men to stop thinking about 
their religion and its meaning. And when this thinking 
is important enough, and the conclusions grave enough, 
the Church has to intervene with her authority and settle 
disputed questions. These conclusions, though not in- 
corporated in the creed or liturgically used, are a part of 
the faith of the Church. A determination of the Church 
does not become binding because it is stated in a certain 
way, but because in some way the Church states it. 
Whether, therefore, it be stated in the creed, or is the 
decree of an Ecumenical Council, or is a conclusion uni- 
versally accepted by the mind of the Church as expressed 
through its theologians, doctors, liturgies, and so on, it 


THE CREED 195 


still is of a binding character on the individual Christian. 
We cannot draw some arbitrary line across the history 
of the Church and say, at this time all authoritative 
statement of doctrines ceased. That would be to declare 
that at a certain time the mind of the Church suffered 
paralysis. We cannot say that at such and such a period 
the content of the Christian revelation had been suf- 
ficiently stated, and no further statement can be looked 
for or accepted, as that is a thing which we cannot know 
and is in itself extremely improbable. Only the Church 
can know its own mind, and only the Church therefore 
can tell us the meaning and content of revelation, and 
considering the nature of revelation, it is not at all likely 
that we shall ever exhaust its content. 

This process of thinking out and fuller statement does 
not imply any change in the meaning of the original 
deposit, any departure from what has been held from 
the beginning as to the essence of the faith. “What the 
Church believes always has been, and is forever certain. 
More than that, it has always been believed, at least im- 
plicitly. It may indeed be that a truth, which, up to a 
given moment, has remained less perceived in the doc- 
trinal deposit, begins to shine out more and to be better 
known as the result of a more profound study called out 
by circumstances, or simply reached in the natural ad- 
vance and the investigation of an intelligent faith. This 
is the progress of dogma, not in itself, for it is complete 
and finished from the establishment of evangelical econ- 
omy, but in relation to us to whose eyes it appears with 
greater clearness. Thus it happens that to a period of 
silence more or less long there succeeds an explicit and 
formal teaching.” + 


1 Renaudin, L’Assumption de la.Sainte Vierge, p. 15. 


196 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


It is through this process of development and readjust- 
ment that the Church meets the new tendencies in thought 
and the accumulations of new knowledge. In their 
natural enthusiasm for the new, men attempt to disdain 
the old, to declare it outworn and unsuited to the present 
stage of human knowledge, or indeed, to be in contradic- 
tion to it, but a true-faith is undisturbed by any assertion 
of its incompatibility with contemporary knowledge. It 
sets itself patiently to study both the new knowledge and 
the old faith, being convinced that if the new knowledge 
actually embodies ascertained truth it must be compatible 
with the old faith, though tHe old faith may have to ‘be 
looked at from an unaccustomed angle to find the point 
of contact. The Christian religion is not a timid and 
shrinking religion, afraid of the advances of knowledge. 
It has had too long an experience for that. It has buried 
too many people who came to weep or exult over its 
grave. Its slowness to accept the last biological or geo- 
logical theory is abundantly justified. The world sorely 
needs precisely such a conservative force to defend it 
from being victimized by enthusiastic theorists. If a 
theory be true it does not injure it to have to wait and 
run the gauntlet of criticism before it be accepted. From 
that point of view the Church has always given valuable 
service to humanity. Occasionally truths may have had 
to wait for a while for acceptance, but never have in the 
end been defeated. “The faith that seeks to understand 
what it believes Fides Querens Intellectum, without ever 
ceasing to have its eyes invariably fixed on revealed truth, 
does not fear to appeal to the light of scientific reason, and 
to throw its rays on the object of its belief in order to il- 
lumine its sense and bearing.” + 


1 Terrien, La Grace et la Gloire, I., XV. 


ES a ee ee 


THE CREED 197 


The whole tendency of the present time is towards 
the repudiation of authority. We are fast drifting into 
the state of anarchy which overwhelmed Israel in the 
time of the Judges. “At that time there was no king 
in Israel but every man did what was right in his own 
eyes.” It is in no wise astonishing that one of the first 
claims to authority to be repudiated is the claim of the 
Church. It has of course been repudiated on the ground 
of a purer and more spiritual view of life or else on the 
ground of a return to the teaching of our Lord. “There 
are no creeds in the New Testament,” it is piously said. 
We have already indicated in what sense this is true. 
The saying itself represents the same grade of intellectu- 
ality as that of a man who should say, “There is no 
science in nature.” Science is ordered knowledge of 
the world, is our arrangement of facts for the purpose of 
better understanding and use. The facts are all there. 
The arrangement only is ours. So the facts of the faith 
are all in the Bible; the arrangement of them for pur- 
poses of use is the Christian Church’s. As well plead, 
“Back to nature and a simple approach to the world with- 
out the intervention of classification and hypothesis and 
all the complexities of modern science,” as to cry, “Back 
to the Scriptures in their simplicity and away with 
ereeds. ; 

If the Catholic Church be right in its belief that it is 
the custodian of a divine revelation it must be an author- 
itative custodian. Unless it can declare what it is that 
has been revealed to it the revelation itself is useless. 
Any theory of private interpretation breaks down before 
the fact that it reduces religion to a purely private affair. 
Religion is no longer what God thinks, but what I think, 
and my next-door neighbor’s religion is what he thinks. 


198 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Now what I think, and what my neighbor thinks, is of 
small importance in these matters. If I can not get at 
the mind of God I can get at no religion in any useful 
sense of the word. Religion is not a philosophy, or a 
conventional code of conduct, that I accept because it 
suits me to do so. On that ground the Church becomes 
a voluntary society of people who have reached a 
temporary agreement on certain matters. The ultimate 
choice has to be between individual anarchism and the 
Catholic theory of an authoritative Church. 

The analogy between faith and science is very close. 
“A science, according to general conception, consists in 
a systematised ensemble of knowledge of facts, which 
are clearly defined, yet all so closely related as to form a 
veritable system in which each supports and explains 
the other in logical sequence: as, for example, in mathe- 
matics. . . . Science thus understood acquires a dogmatic 
authority. It is opposed absolutely not only to ignorance 
but also to more or less probable opinion or belief. When 
once established it becomes as immutable as truth itself. 
It is transmitted through teaching, and the disciple or 
pupil can but accept it directly from the hands of those 
who have received and treasured it.’? This hardly re- 
quires any change as the description of the sacred science 
of which the Church is the authorized teacher. UlI- 
timately of course the authority is the same,—the author- 
ity of the truth. The Church no more than science 
creates truth. It only ascertains and states it. The 
chief difference is that science is an abstraction. The 
Church has actual existence. 


1 Boirac, The Psychology of the Future, p. 1. Boirac rejects 
this description as more than ideal, and looks on science as 
approximating this ideal. 


THE CREED 199 


The recognition and acceptance of these facts is not 
to forfeit one’s liberty but to achieve it. Liberty is 
not achieved by the attainment of what we want but of 
what is necessary for our perfect development. Intel- 
lectual liberty does not consist in thinking what you 
please but in ability to pursue the truth. If the con- 
_ tention of the Catholic Christian is true that truth is 
the possession of the Church of the living God and that 
it alone can impart to us truths that are necessary for 
our salvation, to revolt from the Church is to loge 
spiritual truth and certainty. “To seek freedom not to 
belong to the human organism of the divine life, to ex- 
clude oneself by the bonds of nature and self-will from 
participation in the life of God, from union with His 
unlimited action, and in that divine life from union with 
all human souls who are thus united with God, is a 
self-stultifying endeavor, a _ deliberate  self-bondage. 
Thus in the mystical body of Christ, and there alone, 
liberty and obedience to authority are seen to be identical, 
two aspects of one indivisible life. If the visible Church 
were the perfect and adequate earthly embodiment of 
the invisible, wholly actuated by the Spirit, in perfect 
union with Christ, its Head, this simple identification 
would hold good here also, and there would be no need 
for any division of spheres between authority and private 
judgment. Since, however, the visible Church is com- 
posed of souls not yet in perfect harmony with the 
working of the divine Spirit by reason of human ig- 
norance, the identification between liberty and obedience 
to authority can only be partial. In so far as the Church 
rules and teaches by divine authority, the identification 
is complete even for the visible Church. Thus to sub- 
mit private judgment to a de fide dogma is to liberate 


200 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


cognition from the limits of natural ignorance by a par- 
ticipation in the divine truth, and to obey the moral law 
of the Church is to free the volition from human limita- 
tions by the reception of the divine love. On the other 
hand the less certainty there is that any doctrine or moral 
teaching possesses divine authority, the more doubtful 
becomes this identification of freedom and obedience and 
the greater therefore the need of individual choice.” + 

The formal statements of the Catholic Church then, 
however made, whether through creeds or councils, 
through liturgies or through general consent of theo- 
ogians, doctors or saints, constitute the object of our be- 
lief. When we say we believe, the Christian religion 
it is what we mean that we believe. Our contribution 
is the act whereby we accept the faith. This act is not 
a passive act of intellectual adherence but a positive act 
of self-committal. The ultimate object of faith is not 
a formula, but God; and to believe in God is self-sur- 
render to the will of God. ‘There is an element of love 
in such an act. The faith wherewith we believe is faith 
working by love. 

There is constantly being raised a false antithesis be- 
tween faith and reason. These are set over against one 
another as though they were in necessary opposition, and 
especially as though the way of reason were a stperior 
way of arriving at the truth, or indeed the sole way. “I 
cannot believe what I cannot understand,” is still a fre- 
quent saying in uneducated circles; but to-day there is a 
false reaction from rationalism, especially among psy- 
chologists. This reaction is no doubt far too extreme in 
the other direction, after the manner of reactions. A 


1Watkin, in God and the Supernatural. Edited by Fr. 
Cuthbert. 


THE CREED 201 


recent writer says, “The obsession of logic lies at the root 
of much misunderstanling of human character. We try 
to explain action by reference to logical motives; and 
we fail, because the motives are very commonly not 
logical, and are in fact more powerful than any which 
logic is capable of producing. If we wish to understand 
human character, the first and foremost proposition we 
have to grasp is that motives do not spring from intel- 
ect but from a feeling: that the world of human life 
is governed, not by reason, but by passion, emotion, 
and sentiment.” + I would not care to go so far as that. 
The reason certainly plays a very important part in 
human conduct, but it is just as well to be clear that 
it is not the overwhelming important part the rationalists 
have assigned to it in contrast with faith. 

That faith is not demonstration does not mean that 
its conclusions have a lower degree of certainty, or no 
certainty at all, but that the certainties of faith are ar- 
rived at by a different road than the certainties of, say, 
mathematics. Divine faith rests ultimately on the word 
of God and immediately upon the testimony of the 
‘Church as to what that word is and means. Reason 
never completely commits itself. It always supposes 
the possibility of further evidence, and therefore systems 
built wholly on reason are constantly changing. They 
never are in the possession of the entire truth about 
anything, and have to be revised whenever new truth 
emerges. We have in our own time seen the scientific 
theory of matter undergo radical revision, but the truths 
of faith are absolute and subject to no revision. The 
truths of the Trinity and of the divinity of our Lord 
can undergo no change. Our answer to those who would 


1 Elliot, Human Character, p. 2. 


202 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


change them in the supposed interests of modern thought 
is that to change them is to abandon the Christian 
religion. 

The truths that the Church holds and teaches abn 
God are of such a nature that they can only be known, 
if known at all, by revelation. If they are not revealed 
truths then there is no question of them at all. The 
only ground for belief in the Trinity is that it is revealed. 
That, too, is the only ground for belief in God’s will for 
our salvation and sanctification. When a man says that 
such things are incredible, that he cannot believe them, 
what really happens is that his imagination has gone 
bankrupt. He cannot get any presentment of the fact 
before his mind. That may very well be, and yet the 
facts hold true. Such failure of the imagination does 
not prevent us from the acceptance of the astonishing 
facts placed before us in a scientific manual. I am quite 
unable to understand or to imagine the mode of the trans- 
mission of hereditary characters from parent to child, 
yet I do not dream of denying the fact on that ground. 
Why then should one deny the doctrine of the Trinity, 
or of the Atonement, or of the Real Presence? 

And then too we have to remember the moral quality 
of faith. Assent to demonstration has no moral quality. 
We have to assent. But there is no compulsion about 
faith, When we accept a certain fact or doctrine as 
revealed, as representing the mind of God, it requires an 
act of self-committal to God, requires that we act on some- 
thing different from demonstration. The evidence is 
never compulsive; it leaves room for, and requires, an 
act of free choice. “The evidence seems to me quite as 
good as it is desirable that it should be. If the evidence 





THE CREED 203 


were complete and cogent, faith would become dependent 
upon intellectual proof and intellectual comprehension of 
the proof. It would then lose a great deal of its spiritual 
quality and value. To believe that Christ is a revela- 
tion of God and wish that He were not, is a condition 

about as far from discipleship as anything that can well 
be imagined. Loyalty of heart is more important in the 
spiritual world than correct opinions, though no doubt 
it is true that correct opinions may foster loyalty of heart. 
For those who know their need of just such a revelation 
as this, the evidence is sufficient, for it shows that reason 
is on the side of the faith that such a man desires to 
accept.” And following reason as far as it will lead 
he arrives at the Church which takes him by the hand and 
teaches him what reason could not. 

Faith will not be thrust into any man’s consciousness 
ready made. God leads us to it but we have to accept it 
by a voluntary act. And we have to hold the faith by a 
series of voluntary acts. The fact that we once attained 
to faith does not mean that we shall always keep it. Con- 
stant use of faith is of necessity, if it is to be retained. 
That is the explanation of the frequent fact of the loss of 
faith. Such loss is far less due to intellectual than to 
moral difficulties or to sheer neglect. The well-taught boy 
or girl, who later on “loses his faith” had never in reality, 
in most cases, grasped faith as a living force in life. They 
had vaguely consented to what they had been taught, they 
had followed certain practices of the Christian life, but 
they had assimilated nothing. The Christian religion 
never passed from the state of theory and languid assent 
to the state of vital experience. We can hardly say that 


1Temple, Men’s Creatrix, p. 206. 


204 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


we possess religion unless we are possessed by it. We are 
always in danger of losing it unless it has become to us a 
thing which we cannot do without. 


You doubt if there be any God? 
Doubt is the torpid man’s complaint: 
Still hibernating ‘neath your clod, 
Your sins and virtues grow too faint. 
But come where life is all ablow: 
Be a murderer or a saint, 

And you will know. 


The intensity of our experience is only a measure of the 
reality of our faith. “What will it do for us?” is the 
practical question. Will it send us out as emissaries of 
the Kingdom of God? Will it inspire us with zeal and 
enthusiasm in His cause? Will it sustain us in moments 
of doubt or temptation? Can we always see God behind 
the events of life, offering Himself to us through them? 
A vivid faith grasps God as always present and always 
active, and finds in the consciousness of His presence its 
stay and its joy. On the other hand a failing faith frets 
under the thought of the omnipresence of God and tries 
to escape from the pressure of the thought of Him. A 
man breathes with relief when he thinks he has escaped 
from the “shackles of religion” to the free air of “liberal 
thought.” But does he ever escape in fact? Does faith 
ever die? 


She set a rose to blossom in her hair, 
The day faith died. 

Now glad, she said, and free at last I go, 
And life is wide. 

But through long nights she stared into the dark, 
And knew she lied. 


THE ELEVENTH MEDITATION 
AMS AO MeN MONO, 


With the Offertory the “Mass of the Faithful” begins. 
What has gone before is known as the “Mass of the Cate- 
chumens” (that is, converts under instruction and not yet 
baptized). In primitive times the Catechumens were not al- 
lowed to remain in church beyond this point in the Mass. 
They were considered as not yet fit to be present at the 
solemn acts of consecration and communion. For that one 
must be of the body of the “Faithful,’—/fideles, that is, be- 
lievers, baptized communicant Christians. The spectacle, 
common in a certain type of parish, of a large part of the 
congregation departing at about this point in the service is 
of some interest, as an unconscious revival of a primitive 
practice, and also as a most edifying exhibition of humility 
in those who thus voluntarily relegate themselves to the class 
of the Catechumenate. 

In the Roman Mass the celebrant here says, “The Lord 
be. with, yous.) Let cus < pray? Thisi\is vaspelieicotmnetre 
“Prayers of the Faithful,’ when the congregation was asked 
to join in intercessions for various needs. We still have the 
custom occasionally in the “Bidding Prayers” and in the an- 
nouncement by the celebrant of the intention for which the 
Holy Sacrifice is being offered. 

The collection of alms takes the place of the old offering 
in kind of the actual bread and wine to be used at that 
Mass, which, with the enormous increase in the number of 
communicants, came to be a lengthy and disorderly busi- 
ness. But the collection is not strictly speaking the Offer- 
tory. The Offertory is the formal blessing and offering to 
God, by the celebrant, of the bread and wine. It includes 
the blessing and that which is blessed. The East still uses 
common, leavened bread, as the West did for some centuries. 
The change to unleavened bread was due to the desire more 
exactly to follow the actions of our Lord, who of course 
used unleavened bread at the Paschal supper. After the 
Offertory the celebrant washes his fingers (the Lavabo, 
from the first word of the Psalm he recites meanwhile), 
a symbolic ceremony now, but a practical one in the days 
when he had actually to handle and divide the offerings in 
kind presented. 





Let us listen to the Word of God: 


A body hast thou prepared me. 


Let us picture: 


BRAHAM, at the altar, about to offer Isaac. With 
( ; what absorbed interest we follow the narrative of 
this journey from Beersheba to the mountain in the land 
of Moriah. Very simply the story is told; but from the 
moment that, leaving his servants, Abraham and Isaac go 
on alone a tragic intensity is felt under the words. Very 
stern, very set in its agony, is the face of the father, but 
more heart-breaking is the unsuspecting wonder of the 
boy. Nowhere in all history do we find a scene more mov- 
ing than this. And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, 
and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. 
And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is 
the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My 
son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering; 
so they went both of them together. ‘Try and see that last 
scene at the altar as the sacrifice is being offered. And 
Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, 
and bound Isaac lus son, and laid him on the altar upon 
the wood. ‘Try to enter into the feelings of this man, 
so subjected to a supreme test. What gives him strength 
to go on is, I have no doubt, a feeling, mostly subcon- 
scious, it may be, that the act he is directed to perform 
is atest. It is God who is calling him to act, and he can 
act because of his perfect faithin God. This boy had been 

207 


208 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


miraculously sent to him by God, and he had God’s prom- 
ise, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That promise, he 
knows, stands. So he accounts that God is able to raise 
him up, even from the dead. I think that that was the 
reason that Abraham was able to go on—he saw the prom- 
ise before him all through his trial. He was not sur- 
prised when the angelic voice bade him not consummate 
the sacrifice, and he received his son from the dead m 
a figure. 


Consider, first, 


All Abraham’s life had been an exhibition of obedience. 
That is why God could propose this final test to him. The 
law is, God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be 
tempted above that ye may be able to bear it. But it is 
also true that he often suffers us to be tempted to the 
limit of our endurance. The stupendous nature of Abra- 
ham’s trial is the reflection of Abraham’s power of sacri- 
fice. Is it not weak characters that escape temptation 
rather than strong—escape because of their very weak- 
ness? But Abraham was able to bear the supreme test 
of surrendering to God that which he most loved. You 
remember that this is not the first time he had been tried 
in this searching manner; there had been an earlier test 
when he had been called on to surrender Ishmael, and the 
supplicating cry that vocalised his clinging to Ishmael 
still interprets his anguish to us: - O that Ishmael might 
liwwe before thee. But he was then found equal to the 
sacrifice as he is found equal now. But now there is 
no cry, no pleading with God who asks his son; only, 
one imagines, a grey, drawn face bending over a bound 
boy as he lies upon the altar. In Isaac shall thy seed 


THE OFFERTORY 209 


be called, is his only stay now; but it is an all-sufficient 
stay. The promise of God standeth sure, as it always 
does. The offering is answered by the grace, and he re- 
ceived his son back from the dead in a figure. Perfect 
faith is ready with whatever sacrifice God asks; perfect 
faith judges itself by its readiness to sacrifice. All 
things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we, 
given thee. The life which has become habitually obedi- 
ent to God’s will keeps itself in the posture of sacrifice, 
conscious that only the usufruct of life is its own, and 
that opportunity may serve it at any moment to render 
back to God the things of God with a heart, not saddened 
by their loss, but grateful for their lending. 


Consider, second, 


What is our own attitude toward God in the matter 
of offering, of sacrifice? Is it that of one who holds 
himself ready to meet all the demands of God? Or 
does it go beyond that and become the attitude of one 
who seeks opportunity of sacrifice? That is the char- 
acteristic Christian attitude: it does not wait for God to 
ask but seeks opportunity of self-oblation. The attitude 
of being willing to do a thing and that of being eager to 
do a thing differ greatly. The one submits, the other 
seeks; the one surrenders, the other offers. Unless 
we have the latter quality we are imperfectly Chris- 
tian. The Christian -Church does, indeed, make de- 
mands on life, but it is well for us if those demands 
are anticipated by our sacrifice. It is well for us 
if we are constantly offering to God the sacrifice which 
He does not ask us to consummate. So long as there 
abides in us a haunting fear that God may at any mo- 


210 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


ment make demands on us that we shall be unwilling to 
answer, so long is love imperfect and fear not cast out. 
And consider, that God fosters this attitude in us not 
because of His need of anything that we have but be- 
cause of His need of us. He desires that our love of 
Him and obedience to His will shall so swallow up all 
else that we may be utterly His. The surrender of the 
external thing is but the symbol of our self-oblation 
which is the true sacrifice we make. The child whom 
Abraham laid bound upon the altar was the symbol of 
his choice of God above all else: and the child we lay 
in the earth, with the pain which is always the close 
attendant of great love, but in gratitude for the great 
joy we have had in its brief life, and the joy we, in the 
future expect to have in it for all eternity, is also the 
symbol of a faith which accepts God’s will as the revela- 
tion of its highest good. This is the supreme surrender, 
the surrender of our dearest to the Father’s love. But 
all oblation partakes of the same nature of self-giving, 
and is right for God to ask because it is blessed for us to 
make. The hands which we lift up in supplication about 
God’s altar, may not be empty hands: they must offer to 
God all that we have, all that we are. 


Let us, then, pray, 


For such love toward God as shall make us ready to 
offer back to Him all that He has given us. Pray for 
the spirit of willing self-oblation. 

Lord, here we are; do with us as seemeth best in Thine 
own eyes; only give us, we pray Thee, a penitent and 
patient spirit to accept Thee. Lord, make our service ac- 
ceptable to Thee while we live, and our souls ready for 
Thee when we die; for the sake of Jesus Christ, our 
Saviour. 


THE OFFERTORY 211 


THE OFFERTORY 


The offering of things to God is, I suppose, to be 
regarded as in some sort the offering of ourselves. The 
offerer is assumed to be in communion with God and so 
wholly consecrated to Him. The material object that he 
brings and offers from time to time is a recognition of. 
his relation to God and the means of his self-presentation. 
In the Old Testament system of sacrifices the whole 
value of the sacrifice lay in its representative character 
and was therefore required to be the produce of human 
labour. Merely wild things could not be offered. A man 
offered not what he killed in his hunting but what he 
raised on his land; not the wild fruits that he gathered 
but the produce of his labour. . 

The offertory at the Mass carries on this principle of 
free offering of that which we have produced and which 
therefore is really ourselves. Modern circumstances ° 
have reduced it to a largely symbolical character, but in 
the early days of the Church the true character and 
meaning of the offertory were visible. When members 
of the Church brought, and themselves offered, the bread 
and the wine, a part of it was chosen for the elements 
later in the Mass to be consecrated to be the Body and 
Blood of Christ; and they also offered their goods for 
the support of the Church and of the poor folk among 
the faithful. Present circumstances have reduced this 
element in offertory to the offering of money, with a por- 
tion of which those things which we once offered in kind 
are now purchased. But it is well for us to bear in mind 
what spiritually we are doing when we make our offering, 
not to let the notion of a contribution to the Church dis- 
place the notion of a specific dedication of what we 


212 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


possess to the service of God. It would perhaps help in 
the understanding of this if in the services of the Church 
a rigid line of demarcation were drawn between the 
offertory, properly so called, and what are but collections. 
In certain parishes the sole ceremonial function of the 
day which is performed with the sense of dignity and 
solemnity is the presentation at the altar of a collection 
at Morning or Evening Prayer. This is popularly 
known as the Offertory and elaborate ceremonial and 
musical acts accompany it. It would perhaps be better 
if the confusion of thought implied were avoided. 

The offertory is a part of the Mass, and at present 
the part of the worshipper in this offertory (aside from 
his participation in the whole act as a member of the 
worshipping congregation) is the money contribution he 
is given the opportunity to make. I think we ought to 
understand this contribution (for whatever end) as being 
on a distinctly different basis from our ordinary contri- 
butions for the support of the parish and its work. Our 
act in giving is a part of the action of the Mass itself 
and joins us in that action. It is the present representa- 
tion of the original offering of the members of the con- 
gregation of the elements of the Eucharist and of their 
goods for the support of the poor. This remembrance 
is perpetuated in the solemn presentation on the altar as 
one element in the offertory. However much or little 
therefore we can afford to give we should regard giving 
at this point as obligatory because of its relation to the 
whole Mass. In emphasizing this element of the offer- 
tory and our individual part in it I am not intending to 
imply that all other giving is of a secular nature. I 
simply want to distinguish between a solemn liturgical 
act and the mere gathering of money for pious purposes, 


THE OFFERTORY 213 


We can regard both actions from the more general 
standpoint of good works and the self-consecration that 
is implied therein. 

It ought, one would think, to require no argument to 
convince any, even the most cursory, reader of the New 
Testament, of the necessity and value of good works, but 
one recalls how greatly we are still in unnumbered ways 
dominated by the theology of the Reformation, and prob- 
ably in no theological field greater than in the theology 
of good works and merit. Those who reshaped the 
services and formularies of the Anglican Church at the 
time of the Reformation did not, to be sure, go as far as 
the Continental Protestants did. Article XII of the 
XXXIX Articles is certainly patient of the Catholic in- 
terpretation, but unfortunately the formal teaching of the 
Church and the current teaching of pulpit and theological 
literature are not always in agreement. Undoubtedly 
the current teaching of this latter in many cases was quite 
beyond the formularies, and in no case was the departure 
from Catholic teaching more striking than in this whole 
matter of works. The Continental Reformers and their 
echoes in England not only denied the value of good 
works, but their very existence. Their doctrine of 
original sin was such that they taught that all that a man 
did or could do, considered in itself, was sin and worthy 
of condemnation. That any work he could do could be 
pleasing to God and deserve a reward was utterly denied. 
The break involved in such teaching was not simply a 
break with the devotional theology of the Church, it was 
an utter break with the teaching of the New Testament 
itself. There would seem to be no better illustration of 
the possibilities of self-deceit and the self-imposed blind- 
ness of partisanship and of the danger of private judg- 


214 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


ment than is given by this sweeping denial of good works 
and merit. 

It is interesting to note in passing that the descendants 
of those who vigorously denied all merit in good works, 
or that any work could be really good, but insisted that 
all works had clinging to them the taint of sin, are to-day 
reducing religion alrhost entirely to a series of good 
works. They are sweeping away creeds as of no obliga- 
tion and making the program of modern religion to be 
one of social service. To worship God appears to be 
more and more a matter of private taste, but to serve 
the community is the necessary obligation of the Chris- 
tian. I do not mean that good works are taught as 
necessary to salvation, or promoting it. I am not at all 
sure that the notion of salvation has not followed the 
notion of the necessity of a definite faith, but works are 
taught as the peculiar occupation of the Christian. What 
he is actually in the world for is to improve the world. 

That man is capable of such actions as please God and 
obtain from Him a reward is clear on the basis of Holy 
Scripture. The following are only a few instances of 
that teaching. The Beatitudes state not only the quality 
to be sought by those who vould be perfect as their 
Heavenly Father is perfect, but in each case they state 
a reward, which is peculiar to the Beatitude. ‘Blessed 
are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of 
Heaven.” “Blessed are the meek: for they shail in- 
herit the earth.” And the summing up of the last 
Beatitude is, “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great 
is your reward in Heaven.” Speaking of the end, our 
Lord says, “For the Son of Man shall come in the glory 
of His Father with His angels; and then He shall re- 
ward every man according to his works.” That the 


THE OFFERTORY 215 


judgment will be based upon a man’s works is almost too 
obvious to need illustration. ‘God will render to every 
man according to his deeds: to those who by patient 
continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and 
immortality, eternal life.”’ ‘Now he that planteth and he 
that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his 
own reward, according to his own labour.” “And what-.. 
soever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto 
men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the re- 
ward of the inheritance; for ye serve the Lord Christ.” # 

The reward is frequently identified with that which the 
righteous receive on the day of judgment. “For we must 
all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that 
every one may receive the things done in his body, ac- 
cording to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” 
“And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and 
death and hell delivered up the dead which were in 
them: and they were judged every man according to 
their works.” “And behold, I come quickly; and my 
reward is with me, to give every man according as his 
work shall be.”? This is surely very extraordinary 
teaching, if all a man’s works are sin, and only excused 
from punishment because of the faith that he has in 
Christ. 

This reward of the works of the righteous is commonly 
represented as a “crown”; so S. Paul represents the race 
of life as that in which those who run faithfully receive 
an “incorruptible crown.” This crown S. Paul himself 
looks forward to. “I have fought a good fight, I have 
finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth 


1S. Matthew v, 3, 5, 12. S. Matthew xvi, 27. Romans ii, 6, 
7. I Corinthians iii, 8. Colossians iii, 23, 24. 
2 TI Corinthians v, 10. Revelations xx, 13. Revelations xxii, 12. 


216 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which 
the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: 
and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his 
appearing.” And in the same sense S. James: “Blessed 
is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is 
tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord 
hath promised to them that love him.” And S. John: 
“Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a 
crown) of life.”)* 

A good work is one that is pleasing to God and wins 
from Him a reward. The word reward appears to stir 
the ire of many well-meaning persons. They are 
shocked at the thought of anyone working for a reward. 
We ought to work for the work’s sake, for the love of 
the work, we are told. There is something mean and 
mercenary in the notion of working for a reward, and 
to introduce the notion of reward into the Christian 
religion is to degrade it. That sort of “tall talk” will 
hardly bear analysis. Suppose we change the objection- 
able word “reward” to one that in the premises would 
mean the same thing,—end. Whatever we undertake we 
undertake for a certain end. It is absurd to say that any 
one ought or does work for the work’s sake. One un- 
dertakes a work for the accomplishment of a certain re- 
sult. A man does not spend years in a laboratory seeking 
to discover the germ of a certain disease for any other 
reason than that he hopes to find it. It is the end that 
interests him, as much as is the crop of corn or potatoes 
the interest that stimulates the weary drudgery of the 
farm labourer. The one work is no more disinterested 
than the other. The quality of the interest is different, 


VT Corinthians ix, 25. S11) Timothy) ivi, 3... panics) aeons 
Revelations ii, 10. 


THE OFFERTORY 217 


that is all. Any labour at all needs the stimulus of the 
forward look to the end. The social labour of the phil- 
anthropist will surely not be undertaken except he hope 
to accomplish something, and this end, whatever it may 
be, is his reward, whether it be the alleviation of human 
suffering, or the attainment of the beatific vision. “It is 
a dull business, unworthy of a being made in the image . 
of God, to grind away at work without some noble end 
to be served: some glowing ideal to be attained.” What 
the Christian aims at in his labour is to express his love 
of God and to attain His favor. It is on the fact of 
things that certain conduct pleases God and certain does 
not, which is only another way of saying that certain 
works are good and certain are not. And of the good 
works which spring spontaneously from our nature, and 
which are inspired by purely natural motives, we may 
think, not as the reformers of the Sixteenth Century 
thought, that they are in fact so many sins, but that they 
are pleasing to God, and do in fact receive from His 
bountiful goodness a reward which is indeed not merited 
in the strict sense of the word but because of their 
quality of pleasing God to bring to the doers of them 
the Divine bounty. But there are other human works 
which are meritorious in the strict sense of the word. 
As merit is a subject not very well understood it may 
be well to spend a few moments on it. Merit is defined 
to be “that property of a good work which entitles the 
performer to receive a reward from him to whose ad- 
vantage the work redounds.” The relation here between 
the work and the reward differs from that in the case 
of the work naturally good cited above. There the re- 
ward followed from the good pleasure of God. In this 
latter case, as just defined, the relation is one of justice. 


218 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


The reward follows the work from the fact that it has 
been pledged to it. That does not mean that the work 
itself is of such a nature that God has to reward it. 
When we say that the relation is one of justice what 
we mean is that God has promised under certain cir- 
cumstances to reward certain works. That is to say, 
the claim of reward arises purely from the promises of 
God, and our belief in it is ultimately our belief in the 
fidelity of God. God, for example, has promised a crown 
of life to those who persevere unto the end. “Be thou 
faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” 
As we saw, each of the Beatitudes is accompanied by a 
promise. It is said of some that “they shall walk with 
me in white: for they are worthy.” S. Paul tells his 
Ephesians that “whatsoever good thing any man doeth, 
the same shall he receive of the Lord.” The summing 
up of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is, “For 
God is not unrighteous to forget your work and 
labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, 
in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do 
minister.’’ + 

To be meritorious, a work must be morally good and 
must be performed by one in a state of grace and with 
the assistance of grace, and from supernatural motive. 
We can express this otherwise by saying that the merito- 
rious work is the work of the child of God done out of 
love of his Father. Such a conception of a meritorious 
work removes it from the possibility of human egotism. 
Because ultimately the work is the work of God Him- 
self. Our Lord Himself states the principle when He 
says, “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except 


1 Revelation ii, 10. Revelation iii, 4. Ephesians vi, 8. 
‘Hebrews vi, 10. 


THE OFFERTORY 219 


it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in 
me.” And S. Paul works out the problem, “Work out 
your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is 
God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his 
good pleasure.” ? 

As to the nature of the reward that is merited, it has 
been made sufficiently clear I should think in the pas- ° 
sages already cited. I will not go over that ground 
again, but will merely sum up the teaching. The reward 
that we gain from the bounty of God, which He has 
pledged to us, is no earthly riches nor material reward. 
God does not promise material things—riches or pros- 
perity or health or happiness. His promises concern 
spiritual riches, and what therefore we merit in the way 
of reward is an increase of grace here and eternal life 
or heavenly glory hereafter. The life of the spirit is a 
life of growth, and that growth is conditioned upon our 
reception and use of grace; upon our remaining in a 
state of union, or sanctifying grace, and our use of the 
actual graces which God is continually offering us. As 
these are the objects of merit it is not likely that those 
who seek to perform meritorious works will be animated 
by mercenary motives. It is difficult to picture a person 
living in a life of union with God seeking by good works 
the increase of grace and glory “for mercenary motives.” 
I fancy that there is not at present much danger of such 
abuse of the Catholic conception of the spiritual life. 

We try then to envisage the Christian life as a life of 
devoted service. The Christian is indeed, after an oft- 
repeated apostolic expression, “the slave of God and of 
the Lord Jesus Christ.’’ His whole life’s energy is owed 
to his Lord and Master. This is his primary obligation 


1S. John xv, 4. Philippians ii, 12, 13. 


220 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


and must color and control all his activities. Technically 
he may not be concerned in religious work, but the work 
he is concerned in will be done in a religious spirit, will 
in fact be a consecrated thing. According to the exhorta- 
tion of S. Paul, ‘“Whether therefore ye eat or drink, 
or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Such 
entire consecration of self assumes that all our works are 
properly directed and that they fall into the category of 
good works and are pleasing to God. They are in fact 
associated with the work of God in His Kingdom. In 
them we are reaching our ideal and becoming fellow- 
labourers with Him. ‘We are labourers together with 
God” for the upbuilding of His Kingdom. That is in 
fact our vocation. 


What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil, 
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines, 
For all the heat o’ the day, till it declines 
And death’s mild curfew shall from work assoil. 
God did anoint thee with His odorous oil 
To wrestle, not to reign. 


One finds too many members of the Christian Church 
whose attitude towards the Kingdom of God is that of 
sponges. Their thought is of what they get. Of any 
thought of a personal contribution of time, money, en- 
ergy, they are alarmingly innocent. Their worship con- 
sists in attendance at certain services which they enjoy. 
They never have time to take part in the work of the 
Church. Their giving is a minimum. They do not be- 
lieve in Missions. Their chief contribution is the contri- 
bution of criticism. We are constantly trying to prove 
the advance of the Church by statistics of growth 
furnished by the parochial reports and Church Almanacs. 


THE OFFERTORY 221 


I am inclined to believe that the Church would be much 
stronger if its membership could be purged of idlers 
and hangers-on. No doubt the Church is not a club of 
saints but a hospital in which sick souls are being cared 
for; but certainly it ought not to be transformed into a 
sanitarium for chronic invalids. I do not believe that 
anything has done more to discourage the work of the - 
Kingdom of God than the teaching that good works in 
the theological sense are impossible, and that nothing 
that we can do can forward the process of our santifica- 
tion. That teaching paralyzed activity for long and at 
present has restilted in putting it upon a wrong basis. 
Men who are sincere in their love of God and their 
neighbor will work for them, but taught that such work 
has no religious value, they have largely shifted its proper 
basis and rested it upon a theory of philanthropy. That 
shift, combined with the destructive results of the divi- 
sion of Christendom, has brought it about that the greater 
part of charitable and educational work has passed out 
of control of religion altogether and become thoroughly 
secularized. The supporters of such institutions to-day 
have a very deep sense of social obligation, and a cor- 
respondingly deep distrust of the intervention of religion. 
As a result it becomes extremely difficult to support 
schools, colleges and charities of a positive religious 
character. In the church to which we belong, and of 
which the membership represents vast wealth, such in- 
stitutions are starved, or semi-secularized and the wealth 
flows in abundance to secular institutions. 

Surely what is needed is a clearer and deeper under- 
standing of what it means to be the child of God and of, 
not so much the obligations, as the privileges that flow 
from that status. The heart of the child of God turns 


222 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


naturally to the heart of his Father. Between them is 
the constant interchange of love. The thought of the 
child is the Father’s will, not as a compulsion that must 
be yielded to, but as an ideal, in the pursuit of which 
love can be expressed. And it will be in no degree un- 
worthy of the child if he thinks of the love of the Father 
as seeking him, as gratified in his efforts and as overflow- 
ing to him in the spiritual gifts love reaches to bestow. 

It is no unworthy conception, but one that we find 
deeply rooted in the Gospel, that our good works are the 
means of securing to us an ever-increasing bounty of 
grace. We, loving God and God’s work, devoted to the 
cause of the Kingdom of God, are eager for our self- 
enrichment to the end of more profitable service. That 
is only another way of saying that we want to grow in 
grace and in the knowledge and love of God. 

I suppose that human beings oftentimes do not really 
believe the theories they profess. If we believed the 
theory of religion that many of us have been taught, we 
should find life infinitely depressing. God has been 
represented as one whose chief interest in humanity is 
in its sinfulness, and while His love is shown in the 
proposing of means of forgiveness the human being him- 
self is always and everywhere a sinner, and all that he 
does in need of pardon. The mercy of God—yes; but 
it is not the sort of mercy which stimulates life and 
fills it with joy and gladness. One has nothing to offer 
God but one’s repentance. Surely this makes of religion 
an affair infinitely depressing and in some sort justifies 
the frequent criticism that religion is a matter of concern 
only to the weak and faint-hearted and not to the young 
and strong. 

That is an utterly wrong emphasis. Religion comes 


THE OFFERTORY 223 


to the young and strong with, if you will, a message of 
the danger of sin and the need of repentance, but it is far 
from stopping there. It goes on to call upon them to 
consecrate their whole strength to the work of God. It 
calls them to self-offering, to hard daily work in and for 
the Kingdom of God; and it has no hesitation in telling 
them that God “is not unrighteous to forget your works - 
and labour of love which ye have showed towards His 
name”; that it is written of those who seek to have their 
works seen and appreciated of men that they have their 
reward here and now, and it is the mind of God that 
those who work for Him shall receive of Him according 
to their deeds. “To those who by patient continuance in 
well-doing seek for glory, and honor, and immortality, 
eternal life.’ To teach that sins are always punished 
and that good works are—well, forgiven, is, to say the 
least, not a stimulating presentation of the mind of God. 
It gives one a depressing feeling that one will always be 
regarded with suspicion, even in another world. 

On the other hand, there is enormous stimulating 
power in the thought of constantly gaining an increase 
of grace and of future glory. That implies nothing of 
self-righteousness. There is no notion that what is ac- 
complished is otherwise accomplished than through the 
use of the grace of God; but there is the conviction that 
through the use of that readily, given grace we are 
forwarding the work of our Father, and increasing His 
external glory. Men see our good works and glorify, 
not us, but our Father which is in Heaven. Ours is the 
joy of the labourers who go out with singing into the 
vineyard of the Lord, especially if it be our happy voca- 
tion to be called at the spring of the day, to be of those 
who have escaped the weariness of a wasted life. 


224 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


When the last dawns are fallen grey, 
And all life’s toil and ease complete, 
They know who work, not they who play, 

If rest is sweet. 


Great are the waste places of the world after now 
nearly two thousand years of Christian effort, and some 
of them are really terrifying wastes, for they are not the 
still untouched wilderness, the fields awaiting the sow- 
ing of the harvests, but the desolate fields of once flour- 
ishing Christian communities. I do not see how any 
Christian can look at North Africa, or the Near East, 
without a shudder. One raises one’s eyes from the past 
and looks at the spectacle presented by so-called Chris- 
tian countries, and wonders if it be not written of them 
too, “remember from whence thou art fallen and repent, 
and do the first works: or else I will come unto thee 
quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of its place, 
except thou repent.” There must be a judgment hang- 
ing imminent over so ineffective a Christianity, socially 
considered, as ours—a Christianity which tolerates almost 
without protest the flagrant social abuses which are the 
phenomena of its decay. Shall not God judge such a 
nation as this? 

If there still be any way of adjourning that judgment 
it can only be that we shall repent and do the first works. 
That we should put first things first in our lives and 
insist, as far as in us lies, on the recognition of the 
spiritual foundations of life. There is small use in 
lamenting over the past, and the only use of criticizing 
the present is as a basis for present and future action. 
S. Peter’s exhortation rings true for us to-day. ‘“Where- 
fore gird up the loins of your minds, be sober, and set 
your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought 


THE OFFERTORY 225 


unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient 
children not fashioning yourselves according to the 
former lusts in your ignorance; but as he which hath 
called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of living: 
because it is written, be ye holy; for I am holy.” 


wie Wy 


the 
/ ’ ’ 
Ly 


Wrekle 
Pei 
ye ay 
Ai/akednl 
Mee 





THE TWELFTH MEDITATION 
REL DOD RAY PRO EO) Rosh Ei y Cd Ger 


The “Prayer for the Church Militant” presents a curious 
anomaly. The matter of which it is composed belongs prop- 
erly in the Canon, forming the first part of the long prayer 
of consecration, and this is its place in the First English 
Prayer Book. Some of the Prayer Book revision projects 
have urged a restoration of this order. ‘The proposed re- 
vision of our American book leaves its position unchanged 
but does restore to it the sadly needed commemoration of 
Blessed Mary and the saints and prayers for the faithful 
departed. 

In the Roman (and of course in the old English) Mass 

the celebrant, instead of “Let us pray for the whole state of 
Christ’s Church militant” says, “Pray, brethren, that my 
sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father 
almighty,’ and then reads the prayer called the Secret. The 
Secret is part of the Proper, varying with the day. If more 
than one collect has been used there will be a correspond- 
ing number of Secrets. The name “Secret” is due to the 
fact that these prayers are said secretly, i.e., inaudibly. 
The custom of saying parts of the Mass inaudibly has a 
practical origin: to keep the service from inordinate length 
the celebrant would proceed with his portion without wait-. 
ing in idleness until the choir had finished what it was 
singing. In the case of the Secret the choir is singing the 
Offertory Psalm. That the simultaneous action in sanctu- 
ary and choir may be coordinated and dislocation of parts 
avoided, the celebrant sings out loud the final words of the 
prayer, “world without end,” thus showing choir and people 
what point he has reached. We have strangely preserved 
this safe-guard against confusion and chant, “our only Medi- 
ator and Advocate,” even though we may have said the 
whole prayer in a loud voice. 
_ This system of simultaneous action by clergy and choir 
is carried very much further in the Eastern Church, result- 
ing in what amounts to two separate services going on at 
the same time, with a large part of the Mass inaudible, as 
well as invisible behind the iconostasis or screen. 


Let us listen to the words of our Lord: 


I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the 
world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil. 


Let us picture to ourselves: 


UR Lord in these last hours before his passion 
() praying for His Apostles and those who should 
come after them in the Church. They are in the Upper 
Chamber where they have come to eat the Passover, that 
Passover which saw symbol translated into reality, and 
what it had prophesied fulfilled. The Apostles no doubt 
are filled with the awe of the hours in which the dark- 
ness is gathering about them. Slowly the shadows of 
the great Tragedy are creeping over them and filling 
their souls with darkness. What the coming hours are 
to hold is still uncertain, but that they stand at the very 
edge of some great calamity they must feel. And yet 
when they raise their eyes and look upon the face of the 
Master they may feel something of this doubt dispelled. 
mnerewis epertect calm iinthatetaced:); Theres pertect 
serenity without trace of doubt or pain in all that He 
says. If His words are grave even with an unwonted 
gravity, yet are they the words of one who sees into the 
future and goes forth to meet it with untroubled confi- 
dence. Above all, they are the words of one who bears 
them and their future in His very heart. In whatever 
future unveils itself to Him He sees them and Himself 
providing for their needs. They are to be in the future 
He sees and they are to be together—they are still to be 
His disciples. There is to be some momentary separa- 

229 


230 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


tion, but He will not leave them orphans. He will come 
to them. We seem to see them about the table, listening 
eagerly, breaking in now and again with perplexed 
questioning, with protest. Peter protests his ability to 
go on to the end: TI zyll lay down my life for Thy sake. 
Philip rises to a higher level and shows that he has caught 
a glimpse of the truth: Lord, show us the Father and it 
suficeth us. Watch the breathless interest with which 
they follow His words, forgetful for the moment of all 
else. Then they cease to question and our Lord turns 
from them to pray to the Father for them: J pray not 
that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that 
thou shouldst keep them from the evil. Then silence 
comes. They arise and go out and pass over the brook 
Cedron to a place where was a garden. All their lives 
long the memory of these hours would come back to them 
to strengthen and hearten them. In the years to come 
they would live by these words. 


Consider, first, 


That these words are spoken to us as well as to them. 
They are the words of the Head of the Church to all the 
members of His Body, in all ages, under all circumstances. 
We read them over when our faith grows dim, when our 
courage fails, when the fabric of the earthly Church 
seems to reel under the blows from without, or crumble 
because of some infidelity within. In such hours we re- 
tire into the Upper Chamber with our Lord and listen 
with beating hearts to his prayer to the Father. We 
hear him saying to us as he said to the Apostles: Let 
not your heart be troubled neither be afraid; ye believe 
in God, believe also m me. Power still flows out from 
His words to us as it flowed out from His Sacred Human- 


THE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH 231 


ity to those who touched Him. The same words which 
prepared the Apostles for His passion, prepare us to rise 
up from our communing with Him and go out to face 
the daily work of the Christian life. He has not left 
us. He is still with us—the Head of the Body. He, 
Crucified, Risen, Ascended, is restored to us in living 
Presence. He is with us not only in word, in example, ° 
but in the mission of that other Comforter whom the 
Father sends in answer to His prayers. Abide im me, 
and I in you, He says to us; and we learn that the secret 
of the untroubled life is its fixity in Him. It is not that 
He stills the fierceness of the storms about us—I pray 
not that thou shouldst take them out of the world—it is 
that He stills us: let not your heart be troubled—and so 
the evil has no power. The pressure of the evil remains 
and thereby our inherence in Him is being tested. Can 
we remain calm amid the evil of life? Can we abide un- 
troubled by its assaults? Can we continue in interior 
peace—the peace of our union with Him, while we are 
vexed with all His storms? Surely, in confiding the for- 
tune of His Church to us He expects this of us; He ex- 
pects that we shall manifest His strength in our lives 
in His Kingdom, and not by our fear, our discourage- 
ment, our little faith, our lack of love, our failure in hope 
be weakness and an added burden to the Church. Let 
us learn through intercourse with Him in the Upper 
Chamber how to go out with Him to His combat with the 
Powers of Darkness, how to follow Him, aiding Him in 
the bearing of the Cross. 


Consider, second, 


That it was our blessed Lord’s will to commit the for- 
tunes of His Church—His own fortunes—to men. The 


232 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Kingdom of Heaven was not to come by the operation of 
divine power subjecting men to its rule; it was to come 
through the operation of the Spirit of Holiness trans- 
forming men into the likeness of Christ Jesus. Hence 
its growth, its success, is always determined by human 
response: it succeeds or fails as those who are sent are 
found faithful. Our part in the life of the Church is 
not chiefly passive or receptive, but active. Our Lord in 
carrying on His work is not like a father who holds the 
reins while the child seems to himself to drive: at every 
moment the fortunes of the Church depend on us. It is 
permitted us to divide it by our self-will and lack of 
charity; to lower its spiritual vitality by our sins; to ob- 
scure its power of witness by our failure to respond to its 
ideals, to discredit it in the eyes of men by our frivolity 
and self-indulgence. We can bring its life to the lowest 
level, all but destroy it,—that we can never do. Let us 
think of the nature of our response to this life, manifested 
through the Church. Is it to us the most wonderful of 
our privileges that we have been taken into the Body of 
our Lord and made one with Him? Is it our ever- 
present desire worthily to manifest the life given us? 
Have we a deeply grounded conception of our duty to 
the Church from which all spiritual riches flow out to 
us? Do we remember that our Lord’s last undisturbed 
hours spent with His Apostles were spent in teaching 
them the nature of their vocation as members of His 
Body and in praying that they might be protected and sus- 
tained in that vocation: that foreseeing the future of His 
Church in the world He strove to protect it with a rampart 
of love and prayer, that its faith fail not? It was indeed 
—that He saw—to be a Church Militant here on earth; 
but through His power the gates of hell should not prevail 


. 


THE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH 233 


against it. But this or that soul may fail in the struggle 
with hell. Have you been found faithful? 


Let us, then, pray, 


To Him for deeper understanding of the nature of the 
Church as the Body of Christ. Pray that you may re- 
spond to its life and be delivered from the evil that besets ” 
you. 

O God, who hast promised that Thou wilt never be ab- 
sent from Thy Church unto the end of the world, and 
that the gates of hell shall never prevail against the 
Apostolic confession; graciously make Thy strength per- 
fect in our weakness, and show the efficacy of Thy divine 
promise, while Thou deignest to be present with Thy fee- 
ble ones. For then do we beyond doubt feel Thy presence, 
when thou dispensest to each one, at all times, in fitting 
manner, things desirable, and by perpetual protection 
guardest us from the attack of all our adversaries. 


PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH MILITANT 


As the drama of the Mass is enacted before us there 
is now displayed the scene of the Church throughout all 
the world, in some sense stretching from the moment of 
creation to the end of time, the thought and purpose of it 
inter-penetrating and determining the form of all the 
creative work of God. For we can only conceive of that 
work as including from the beginning the purpose of the 
Incarnation, and therefore also the purpose of the Church. 
The Church is the actual carrying out of the purpose of 
the Incarnation, is the congregation of all those who are 
gathered into one in our Blessed Lord. 

When therefore at this point in the Mass we pray for 


234 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the whole state of Christ’s Church Militant we have 
forgotten for the time all localism and regionalism and 
are looking out upon the ideal body of Christ, upon His 
mystical body. There are times when we are compelled 
to think of its imperfections and its divisions, but this is 
not such a time. Here and now in thought and purpose 
we have achieved unity. We are not praying for the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, or for the Church of Eng- 
land, or for the Eastern or Western Church, except as 
these are contained in the whole that transcends them. 
We are praying for that Church which is the body of 
Christ, the Holy Church throughout all the world, which 
is trying to manifest here on earth the will and the pur- 
pose of God; sadly broken and defaced to-day, displaying 
the disastrous results of human sin, of envy and jeal- 
ousy, of pride and covetousness of power, it yet remains 
the expression, however thwarted, of a divine purpose, 
of “the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ 
Jesus our Lord.” Looking out over the awful situation 
that sin has brought about we still are able to catch the 
vision of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church 
upholding the ideal of the Incarnate life in the midst of 
the world. And in the strength of that vision we take 
courage and fare forward. 

And what a stimulating vision it is, that of the Catholic 
Church! There are a few men gathered about their 
Master in an upper room in Jerusalem listening to His 
final words of council. A few days later these same men 
are gathered in fear in the same room, feeling that the 
house of their dreams has fallen about them and that 
nothing remains for them but a violent and bitter death. 
Then this same room sees recovery and a new born 
community filled with fervent zeal, glowing with hope, 


THE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH 235 


enthusiastic memories of One who was dead and is alive 
again. Then how the drama unfolds! The messengers 
of glad tidings are transforming the whole world with 
their message. Wherever they go communities of the 
faithful spring up and themselves become centers of light 
and life. The good news of Jesus and the Resurrection 
penetrates everywhere, even to the uttermost isles of the — 
sea. The risen life of Jesus lays hold of the multitudes, 
and the results are seen in the fires of martyrdom; in the 
perilous labors of missionaries; in the prayers and dis- 
cipline of convents; in the unnumbered multitude of sim- 
ple souls who unnoticed fill the cities and villages of the 
world. And to our own day the story has gone on, a 
living history, adding chapter after chapter to the expe- 
rience of the Incarnation. 

It is for this one Church that we who are the Church 
in this place, the localization of the Catholic Church, come 
together to pray. Let us try for a moment to under- 
stand in greater clearness what that Church really is. 

It is in the first place Jesus Christ Himself. He at 
His Incarnation took that body which was later to be 
expanded by the addition of new members into the whole 
Church, whether on earth or elsewhere. The best de- 
scription of it is the simple description that it is His Body. 
That is the aspect of it upon which the New Testament 
writers focus attention. He, Christ, is the Head and 
He, the Father, “gave Him to be the head over all things 
to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that 
filleth all in all.” There could hardly be a broader com- 
mission, or a clearer statement than that. Our relation 
to this Body, it is often repeated, is that of members. 
“We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His 
bones.” Nothing is really added when this statement is 


236 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


elaborated, but its presentation from various angles and 
in various contexts does add to its impressiveness. “He 
is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, 
the first-born from the dead; that in all things He might 
have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in 
him should all fulness dwell.” This analogy of the 
spiritual body and the physical body is carefully drawn 
out with the view to emphasizing our personal relation to 
our Lord. “Now ye are the body of Christ, and severally 
members thereof.” “For as we have many members in 
one body, and all members have not the same office: so 
we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one 
members one of another.” ? 

What constitutes this union or unity of many into one 
is the participation in a common life. This is sufficiently 
indicated in the passages just cited. The sharing of life 
achieves the unity both of the natural and of the spiritual 
body. The same fact is indicated in our Lord’s parable 
of the vine and the branches. ‘Abide in Me and I in you. 
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide 
in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.” 
The same truth underlies our Lord’s words as to the Holy 
Communion. “As the living Father hath sent Me, and 
I live by the Father, so He that eateth Me, even he shall 
live by me.” 

The essential unity of the Church therefore is the unity 
of its life. It exists, and can only exist, by virtue of the 
inherence of its members in Christ. This inherence is 
effected and sustained by participation in the sacraments 
which the Church is commissioned to administer, but the 
unity which has been effected between the Christian and 


+ Ephesians i, 23. Ephesians v, 30. Colossians i, 18, 19. I 
Corinthians xii, 27. Romans xii, 4, 5. 


THE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH 237 


Christ, though effected by the agency of the Church, can- 
not be destroyed, save by the sin of the individual. We 
should understand, therefore, that the external divisions 
of the Church, due to human sin and frailty, do not of 
necessity separate the members of Christ from Him. 
There is such a thing as the soul of the Church, made up 
of all those who are at any time in union with Christ, ' 
whatever may be their outward affiliations: even when, 
through no fault of their own, they are associated with 
bodies which are not parts of the Church. Just as in 
the Church there are many members whose membership 
is nominal and external, who are separated from the 
Head of the Church by their sins while retaining mem- 
bership in the visible Body, so there are those who, not 
being in union with the visible Body, are yet, because of 
their faith and love, in union with the Head. The Church 
has a visible organization: is made up of many com- 
munities scattered through the world and held together 
in external unity by governmental machinery. The 
machinery is to-day out of order and the various parts of 
the Church do not work together. But the Church in 
its full sense as the Body of Christ is not made of com- 
munities but of all those who are in union with Jesus. 
We value the visible Church as the body of Christ, 
through which we normally attain union with Christ, but 
we do not feel that the present disunion of Christendom 
is fatal to the claims of all but one body to administer 
valid sacraments, or to preach the Gospel. In other 
words, however valuable we may esteem external unity 
(and we can hardly over-stress what is the declared will 
of our Lord) we must insist that the interruption of that 
unity is not fatal to the communion of the individual who 
possesses faith and love with His Redeemer and Head. 


238 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


No doubt the theory of an invisible Church has been 
pushed to impossible lengths, but we must not let that 
make us blind to the fact that there is a valid distinction 
between belonging to the exterior organization, which is 
the Church in any place and being united with the soul 
of the Church. In fact it would seem possible to lay an 
undue stress upon the fact of external unity. No doubt 
external unity is our Lord’s will, and we should do all 
we can, make any sacrifice required, to achieve it. But 
at the same time it is not necessary to lose sight of the 
fact that unity, like the other marks of the Church, has 
always been an ideal rather than an achievement. It is 
hardly possible to put one’s finger upon a year in the 
Church’s history when there has not been in existence a 
division of some sort. Naturally, if we accept the claim 
that outward communion with the Bishop of Rome is 
the sole test of Catholicity, the question falls, but in view 
of the clear facts of the history of the first millennium 
one can hardly take that position. And in regard to no 
other note of the Church is perfect accomplishment re- 
garded as the test of Catholicity. As a test of the 
legitimacy of the Church surely sanctity is of primary 
importance, yet it has never been held as other than a 
heretical theory that the Church must be, and can only 
be, composed of saints in the sense of persons of achieved 
holiness. The sects which from time to time have been 
founded upon that theory have been repudiated by the 
mind of the Church. The Church is holy in its con- 
stitution as the body of Christ. It is custodian and ad- 
ministrator of the grace which, properly used, will result 
in sanctity, but never at any time has its membership been 
wholly of saints. The holiness of the Church remains an 
ideal to work towards rather than an achieved fact, and 


THE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH 239 


so it is with the unity of the Church. There is a certain 
inner and vital unity between Christ and His members, 
but the external unity between the members themselves 
remains to-day an ideal which beckons us on. And the 
achievement of that ideal, which all men who love our 
Lord must passionately desire, can only be hindered and 
delayed by the proposal of conditions which are inherent: 
neither in the constitution of the Church nor the develop- 
ment of principles under the sanction of the whole body. 

But in our thought of the Church Militant we will do 
well to confine ourselves to the thought of the one Church 
as it exists in the mind of God and is but partially re- 
flected as yet in the accomplishment of men. The 
Church is our mother, the object of our devotion and 
love. It has always cared for us and always will, if we 
abide faithful. “At our coming into the world the 
Church receives us in its arms; it takes possession of us. 
It makes upon us mysterious unctions, pours a little water 
on our heads, and we are holy. At the hour of our 
supreme agony it again comes and prints upon our mem- 
bers the seal of salvation; it makes the last unction, 
blesses us the last time—and we are consecrated for 
death. It will bless even our dust in the tomb, so that 
our remains will, even in corruption, preserve a sort of 
majesty ; and God will remember that we have been con- 
secrated for the resurrection of glory.” 

The prayer we have before us opens with a cry for 
unity, but recognizes that unity must go along with truth. 
There can be no enduring union save on the basis of truth. 
Unity by compromise is of the least possible value, and 
therefore all modern negotiations for unity are destined 
to failure. We have been aroused in the last twenty-five 
years, as probably never before, to an understanding of 


240 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


certain evils that result from our divisions, and naturally 
we have seen those evils in terms of a contemporary ex- 
perience. We live in an industrial social order and there- 
fore we have seen the evils of division as waste. The 
spectacle of the small town with its group of antagonistic 
and ill-supported churches got on our nerves. The rapid 
falling off of candidates for the ministry, due to the 
meager support that could be looked forward to in com- 
parison with the rich rewards that attend ability in lay 
life, has alarmed us for the future, especially as the de- 
cline in numbers seems always to be attended with the 
decline in the ability of those who offer themselves. 
These, and similar considerations, have led many to look 
to union as the solution of a growing economic problem. 
Others find a prospect of union in the decline of dogma 
among the Protestant bodies. The wall of creeds and 
conventions appears to have broken down and with their 
finishing the possibility of a platform on which a large 
part of the Christian world can agree seems a possibility. 

There is a great deal of force in these considerations 
if one does not believe in a revelation which has been 
progressively defined during the history of the Church, 
and which is binding upon the conscience. J do not at 
all see why Protestantism should not become a united 
force and present a unified action to the world. There 
are tides setting in that direction which seem to gather 
headway as the years go on. There would appear to be 
no real obstacle to such a union save the ordinary human 
obstacles which have always to be encountered, dislike 
of change, and the selfish opposition of vested interests. 
Such a Protestant union would be a vast gain in many 
respects other than economic. 

But those who believe in the Catholic religion can not 


THE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH 241 


approach the problem in the same way. They cannot 
jettison the experience of the Church in favor of a re- 
turn to some imaginary “simple Gospel” which will afford 
a convenient platform for unity. They can not sacrifice 
principal to finance, however that may be in line with the 
modern mind. While, therefore, a Pan-Protestant union 
would seem possible and desirable, a Catholic union which’ 
would bring together those who, however outwardly 
separate, regard themselves as members of the Catholic 
Church and legitimate heirs to its inheritance, is a more 
difficult matter. 

But for my own part I decline to consider it as a 
hopeless problem. It is a problem that requires much 
patience and much charity, but it must be soluble, and the 
signs of the times are not wholly discouraging. What is 
more needed than anything else is a preliminary discipline 
looking to the elimination of prejudice. There are in- 
herited party cries that need to be forgotten; ancient quar- 
rels, the very point of which has passed from memory, of 
which a shade remains to poison and distort our thought. 
We need to get rid of the assumption that we are masters 
of all truth and especially can not learn from those from 
whom we separated. We need to consider one another’s 
peculiarities, not as points of repulsion, but as possibly 
containing valuable treasure. We need to make all 
allowances for differences of race, of tradition, of en- 
vironment, as determining an emphasis which varies 
from ours. Foolish as it seems, it is in fact prejudice 
and misunderstanding more than dogmatic differences 
that keep Catholics apart. I am quite certain that an 
agreement on what is the faith of the Church presents 
small difficulty compared with the difficulty growing out 
of differences of practice. The East and the West seem 


242 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


to be able to reach an agreement on the meaning of 
Eucharistic doctrine far easier than they can on the sort 
of bread that is to be used in the celebration of the Sacra- 
ment. J am convinced that there are no vital differences 
between East and West; even that which seems to-day the 
insuperable difference, the papal claims, is quite patient 
of an interpretation which will make them acceptable to 
other than Roman Catholics. 

I stress these things partly because of their importance, 
and partly because what we are immediately considering 
is a prayer for the whole state of Christ’s Church Militant, 
and not a prayer exclusively for the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, and if we are to pray effectively, so all saints 
instruct us, we must first of all prepare ourselves to pray. 
If to-day we bring a cause before God we must be clear 
that we understand what we pray for, as we ought. To 
approach God with a prayer for a unity that we do not 
desire, or which we are quite certain can not be obtained 
because of our imposed conditions, is little less than 
sacrilege. Prayer reduces to superstition when we have 
made up our mind and try to impose it upon God. Any 
one who is vitally interested in unity will be ready to give 
time to the study of those facts which divide Christians, 
with a distinct attempt at a sympathetic understanding. 

The prayer for the Church puts the essence of this 
position better than I can hope to do when it bids us 
pray, “that all those who do confess Thy holy name may 
agree in the truth of Thy holy word and live in unity and 
godly love.” Truth and love are two indispensable 
elements. We tend to stress one or the other. We lose 
sight of love in the bitterness of controversy and so unfit 
ourselves to even understand our opponents; or we first 
substitute sentimentalism for love and then sacrifice truth 


THE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH 243 


to it. The way of success would seem to be to approach 
one another with the desire to understand and with. no 
shadow of an attempt to compromise. That that should 
indeed be our attitude, and above all, the attitude of our 
authorities, is indeed a thing to be prayed for in these 
fateful days. The immediate future will, no doubt, see 
many well meaning attempts at union of some sort. Let 
us pray that such will be not only well intentioned, but 
divinely directed. 

We are praying for the Church Militant, and the 
prayer passes before our eyes—the spectacle of that 
Church: “every man in his own order,’ “Christian rul- 
ers,’ “bishops and other ministers,’ “all Thy people,” 
beseeching God that they each, in accordance with their 
Own vocation, may fulfil the holy word of God in the 
furtherance of the upbuilding of His Kingdom. As 
members of the Church Militant their primary business 
is to fight; not to dream of victory, but to win it; not to 
beguile themselves with the illusion that they ought to be 
in the ideal state of the New Jerusalem where milk and 
honey abound for the elect, but that they are set to push 
out the frontiers of the Kingdom into hostile territory, 
where they will be troubled on every side, where without 
are fightings and within are fears. But neither the trou- 
ble, nor the fightings, nor the fears are of much con- 
sequence; what endangers our position is the possession 
of a false ideal of the Kingdom as a Kingdom of peace and 
plenty, filled with the shouts of those who feast. Nothing 
is more disastrous for the spiritual effectiveness of a mem- 
ber of the Church Militant than the assumption that he 
is really a member of the Church Triumphant, and ought 
not to be called upon to fight, that the very existence 
of controversies and of divisions is an evidence of the 


244 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


failure of the Kingdom, rather than, as they are, the 
evidence of its vitality. The penitent is told by his 
director that the fact that he is tempted is unimportant ; 
the fact on which to focus his attention is whether he 1s 
adequately resisting temptation. So it is in the life of 
the Church; not to be fighting is an indication of a state 
of death. Activity is the inevitable sign of life, and in 
the spiritual life activity against sin. 

The phenomena of our own time are out of perspective 
in relation to the whole life of the Church. They are 
too near for us to see their meaning, and their importance 
is inevitably exaggerated. We have only to look back 
over a century of Church history to see many times which 
were thought to be times of acute crisis, when the whole 
life of the Church hung on some decision of authority 
shortly to be made, which, as we see them now in their 
relation to the whole facts and not in isolation, do not 
look critical at all, and the flutter of contemporaries over 
them looks a little absurd. It happens some time that in 
a picture gallery one comes suddenly upon a picture which 
seems a mere mass of unrelated daubs of color; a mean- 
ing appears perhaps dimly; and as one backs off across 
the gallery the apparently unrelated color-masses melt 
into a harmonious whole, and a vision of beauty of earth 
or sea emerges. It is somewhat that way with our vision 
of contemporary facts of the life of the Church. We see 
the occurring facts as unrelated happenings, as crude 
masses of error or sin which threaten the very life of 
the Church. In our terror, in our anxiety, we cry out 
and protest that the life of the Church is in danger, or 
even that we cannot be any party to this outrage and 
must flee to a position of personal safety lest we lose 
our soul by our complicity, all the time forgetting that 


THE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH 245 


the vocation of a soldier is a vocation not to save his life, 
but to risk it. It is better to die fighting on the frontier 
than to live feasting in quiet in the false security of a 
position to which we are not assigned. Perhaps here, as 
well as in other circumstances, our Lord’s saying is preg- 
nant. ‘‘He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that 
loseth his life for My sake shall find it.” The greatest: 
ocean wave, the experts tell us, is the tide that travels 
round the earth once in about twenty-four hours. It is 
too great a wave to be seen by the eye. We only become 
aware of it by the rise and fall of the waters. What we 
do see are the minor waves, the rise and fall of which 
are instantly perceived, and which break upon the shore 
at our feet and compel our attention. So it is with the 
movement in the life of the Church. As a whole it 1s 
too big to be perceived at any time. We perceive only 
the flash of surface wavelets which sparkle in the sun- 
light, or the dash of the surf upon the rocky shore. 
According to our temperaments we pick out this or that 
phenomenon, or group of phenomena, as being significant 
or critical in the Church’s life. It would be well if we 
could study history a little more closely and observe how 
the crises which were considered fatal, or the successes 
which seemed the final triumph, alike become small epi- 
sodes in the life of the body of Christ. 

In the meantime we are to fight the battle of the 
Church Militant, and fight it with an intelligent under- 
standing of the field we are called to fight in and of the 
nature of the combat we wage. We need to understand 
that we conquer heresy and error and sin effectively by 
what I may call indirect methods. As the individual 
Christian overcomes a special temptation by the develop- 
ment of spiritual strength, so the elect as a whole: “the 


246 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


weapons of our warfare are not carnal.” The fight of 
the Church Militant is doubtless a fight against evil, but 
its method is to “overcome evil with good.” Its vital 
battle is within itself. Its success or failure depends 
upon its ability to develop spiritual strength. 

Ultimately, then, our fight is for the attainment of a 
higher standard of spiritual life. That is the only success 
worth considering. Other things are incidental to that. 
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness 
and all these things shall be added unto you.’ When the 
Church—these authorities and people who pass before 
us in the prayer for the Church—ceases to stress spiritual 
character and looks to other means and other fields of 
success, the Church is fallen on evil times. The standard 
of the Gospel life must not be compromised but sustained 
at its full height and presented in all its difficulty. To 
pad the Cross so that it will not hurt our backs when we 
carry it is an impossible undertaking. 

That part of the prayer which is especially for the peo- 
ple presents this issue clearly. “That with meek heart 
and due reverence they may hear and receive Thy holy 
Word, truly serving Thee in holiness and righteousness 
all the days of their life.’ Meekness and reverence is 
the road we travel to obtain holiness and righteousness. 

The success of the Church then is conditional upon the 
acquirement by its membership of those deep spiritual 
qualities which are the qualities of the Christian life. 
Precisely here is the battle joined. This is the mark of 
a standing or falling Church. The vital question is, is 
the Church at any time through its “Christian rulers” and 
its “bishops and other ministers” holding before “Thy 
people” unflinchingly, and without compromise or reserva- 
tion, the ideals of our Lord’s life and teaching, holding 


THE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH 247 


them not as a standard politely saluted from a safe dis- 
tance, but presenting them first of all as the actual 
standards of their own life. Judgment begins at the 
house of God and there must be displayed, if the Church 
is to do its work adequately, the ideals of the Gospel at 
work. A clergy that is merely on the level of respectabil- 
ity, as respectability is at any time and in any circle con- 
ceived, which is in itself worldly and self-indulgent, does 
not express the mind of Christ, and will not set forward 
the Kingdom of God. The righteous demand on those 
who are called to positions of leadership in the Church of 
God to-day is that they be eminent in spiritual qualities, 
capable of guiding those committed to their charge in all 
the ways of God. Neither pressure of business, nor 
worry of administration, can excuse them from this obli- | 
gation, the obligation ‘“‘to be messengers, watchmen and 
stewards of the Lord. To teach, to premonish, to feed 
and to provide for the Lord’s family, to seek for Christ’s 
sheep that are dispersed abroad and for His children, who 
are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be 
saved through Christ, forever.” 

This is the essential battle, the battle to raise human 
life to a higher level, to spiritualize it. The Church 
will always succeed if it puts that first among its am- 
bitions. Its ministers, too, will always succeed if that 
is their aim. A young man wrote from the battlefield, 
“T had decided, no matter how successful I was at Ox- 
ford, to go and teach in an ordinary secondary 
school. ...IJI want to teach children what love and 
beauty are, and how infinitely better goodness is than 
mere satisfaction—is it satisfaction?—of physical de- 
sires.” That is a truly Christian ambition, an ambition 
of humility. It may be supplemented by S. Vincent de 


248 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Paul’s prayer for newly ordained priests: “I have 
prayed, and will pray, that our Lord may give them an 
ever new desire for the Sacrifice, and grace that they 
may never offer it merely from habit.’ When and 
where the Church Militant produces such qualities, and 
commands such service, there is no failure. The fact 
itself 1s success. 


THE THIRTEENTH MEDITATION 
Tob sex HiOR TAT TONS 


There are no less than four Exhortations embodied in our 
Prayer Book Mass. After the Prayer for the Church it 
is ordered that the priest shall say, at least once each month, 
the long Exhortation beginning ‘‘Dearly beloved in the Lord. 
~. 2 Following. this is the ‘familiar’ “Ye “whow do 
truly. ...” At the end of the Mass is another Exhortation, 
some four or five hundred words long, which is enjoined 
when notice of a celebration of the Holy Communion is 
given out. This is followed by an alternative form, equally 
long, to be used if the people are negligent in their attend- 
ance. In addition the Prayer Book contemplates that or- 
dinarily the worshipper will have been exhorted, in Matins, 
by the “Dearly beloved brethren.” The idea, as well as 
much of the actual wording, of these exhortations derives 
directly from continental Protestantism, Lutheran or Gene- 
van. They made their first appearance in the Order of 
Commumon,—the initial liturgical reform,—in 1548. This 
Order was a set of communion devotions, in English, intro- 
duced into the middle of the unchanged Latin mass. It 
comprised Exhortations, Confession, Absolution, Comfort- 
able Words, Prayer of Humble Access, the words of ad- 
ministration and the Blessing. These communion devotions 
were taken over into the New Prayer Book liturgy when that 
supplanted the ancient missal. They were introduced be- 
cause of a real and deeply felt need of the mass of the 
people for elemental religious instruction. 


Let us listen to the words of S. Paul: 


He that eateth and drinketh in an unworthy manner, 
eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning 
the Lord’s body. 


Let us picture: 


UDAS, sitting at table with our Lord at the Last 
re! Supper. How vividly all the details of this scene 
stand out before us—the gathering about the table, the 
grouping of the Apostles, the eating of the Passover. We 
are conscious whenever we call the picture before us of 
one figure out of place there—the figure of Judas. 5S. 
John leans on our Lord’s breast, S. Peter sits near, and 
somewhere within reach, so that he could be handed the 
sop, Judas. As we look at him it seems that the 
shadow of the great crime is already on him: he has 
made up his mind to betray our Lord—Mis Lord. This 
purpose our Lord reads as He looks into his soul. And 
yet there is no movement of anger, of repulsion, no dis- 
turbance of the perfect calm with which our Lord goes 
on with his converse with the Apostles. He has, no 
doubt, understood the possibilities of this man for long; 
yet He has continued to tolerate him in the intimacy of 
His life with the Apostolic band. When He taught He 
let Judas stand in the circle that surrounded Him. 
When, in the retirement of whatever was their passing 
resting-place, He talked quietly with the Apostles, His 
eye fell on the face of Judas—but He made no sign. He 

251 


252 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


made use of him from day to day as the business man 
of the Apostolic company, left him in charge of their 
little store of money, though all the time He knew he 
was a thief. And now He suffers him to sit near Him 
at the table—to sit till the last possible moment—for 
there is a moment beyond which he cannot be endured: 
he must not partake of the Supper. Therefore he is 
dismissed. What thou doest, do quickly. And he went 
out. And it was night. 


Consider, first, 


That our Lord’s attitude toward Judas, which it is our 
impulse to think utterly strange, is, in fact, compre- 
hensible, because it is the revealed attitude of God to- 
ward sinners. The Lord is long-suffering to us-ward, 
not willing that any should perish. Long-suffering is 
one of the qualities of God that the New Testament most 
dwells on. It is our temptation, indeed, to resent this 
divine self-restraint which appears to look on while sin 
reigns in the world. Even the souls of the redeemed 
cry from beneath the altar, How long, O Lord, holy and 
true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them 
that dwell on the earth? But God bids them rest yet for 
a little season, for His patience is not yet run out. Yes, 
we can understand the attitude of our Lord; what it is 
difficult to understand is the attitude of Judas. How 
could he live day by day with our Lord and be un- 
changed? How could he go on nursing a secret sin 
while he looked in the face of incarnate truth and purity? 
How could he hear our Lord declaring the nature and 
the results of sin, and see Him offering forgiveness to 
those who turned from sin, and feel no impulse to re- 
pentance in his own heart? As one sits quietly and 


THE EXHORTATIONS 253 


thinks of it, it is incredible; but as one goes out into 
the world of men and observes human nature in action, it 
is a visible fact. Remember, Judas knew less of our 
Lord than we do. He had not been trained from child- 
hood to confess Him God over all, blessed forever. 
Christendom is full of men and women who have aban- 
doned their allegiance and denied their Lord for the’ 
vicious indulgence of their senses, through intellectual 
conceit, through love of mere pleasure. Judas is not 
an isolated phenomenon, a single noxious bloom in the 
garden of humanity; he is the exceeding great multitude 
of those who willingly live in mortal sin, scoffing at the 
thought of repentance. And our Lord still moves among 
them, offering Himself to their insults, suffering Himself 
to be jeered at and blasphemed, even permitting that 
there be distributed to them, as he did not permit to 
Judas, the sacred symbols of His Body and Blood. The 
hopefulness of God is wonderful! The Lord ts long- 
suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should per- 
ish, but that all should come to repentance, 


Consider, second, 


How you have presumed on the long-suffering of God. 
It is not necessary to be a Judas to do that: all that is 
necessary is to persist willingly in sin. It is just that 
element of wilfulness in human nature—in one’s self— 
that appalls one. It is at once so inconceivable and so 
common. One looks back over one’s past and sees that 
often one has chosen, with quite deliberate choice, open- 
eyed and understanding, to put aside the will of God and 
go one’s own way! As some fact of our experience 
rises before us, we shudder to think what must have 
been our spiritual disaster if the long-suffering of the 


254 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Lord had then failed. How many times have we greed- 
ily chosen the world, though we knew we had no right 
to it and that we were dishonoring our Master by our 
choice. How often have we shaken off the “interfer- 
ence,” the “restraint,’ the ‘narrowness’ of religious 
precepts, and defiantly gone our way to our chosen in- 
dulgence? There is often within the Church a certain 
defiance of the Church’s laws and standards, which in- 
sists upon participating in the most sacred mysteries of 
the Church while alien in spirit from all that those mys- 
teries imply in the way of fitness for their reception. 
This is a very horrible thing, but we cannot close our 
eyes to the facts. And the Church itself is under no 
illusion in this matter. It is not from an improvised 
rostrum in a city square, to the mixed multitude which 
passes by, but from the altar itself that the Church 
directs the priest to say: “If any of you be a blas- 
phemer of God, an hinderer or slanderer of His Word, 
an adulterer, or be in malice, or envy, or in any other 
grievous crime, repent you of your sins, or else come 
not to that holy Table.’ The wisdom and experience 
of the Church foresees the possibility of the presence of 
Judas, and strives to obtain that he go out to his work 
before the sacred banquet is partaken of. Let us think 
for a moment of our own case, and whether we are clad 
in “the marriage garment required by God in holy Scrip- 
ture’ of those who will be “worthy partakers of that 
holy Table.” 


Let us then pray, 


For a deep and true repentance for all our sins. 
. Pray that you may see yourself as God sees you. Pray 
that the long-suffering of God may lead you to the utter 


THE EXHORTATIONS 255 


abandonment of sin and acceptance of his offered 
salvation. 

Almighty and merciful God, the Fountain of all good- 
ness, Who knowest the thoughts of our hearts, we con- 
fess unto Thee that we have sinned against Thee, and 
done evil in Thy sight. Wash us, we beseech Thee, from 
the stains of our past sins, and give us grace and power’ 
to put away all hurtful things, so that, being delivered 
from the bondage of sin, we may bring forth worthy 
fruits of repentance. O Eternal Light, shine into our 
hearts, O Eternal Goodness, deliver us from evil. O 
Eternal Power, be Thou our support. O Eternal Wis- 
dom, scatter the darkness of our ignorance. O Eternal 
Pity, have mercy upon us. Grant unto us, that with all 
our hearts, and minds, and strength, we may evermore 
seek Thy face; and finally bring us, in Thine infinite 
mercy, to Thy holy presence. So strengthen our weak- 
ness, that, following in the footsteps of Thy blessed Son, 
we may obtain Thy mercy, and enter into Thy promised 
joy; through the same Jesus Christ, our only Saviour 
and Redeemer. 


THE EXHORTATIONS 


The exhortations in the Book of Common Prayer 
sound a note of warning to those who would receive the 
Holy Communion, while at the same time they stress the 
necessity for such reception. Very earnestly and lov- 
ingly the exhortation to be used by the priest “in case he 
shall see the people negligent to come to the Holy Com- 
munion,” says: “I intend by God’s grace, to celebrate 
the Lord’s Supper: unto which, in God’s behalf, I bid 


256 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


you all who are here present, and beseech you, for the 
Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, that ye will not refuse to come 
thereto, being so lovingly called and bid by God Himself.” 

It is a very eloquent and moving appeal as it goes on 
to analyze the excuses men make for abstaining from the 
sacrament, and to urge the grounds for reception. On 
the other hand it is necessary, as the second exhortation 
does, to insist on the dangers of “‘the unworthy receiv- 
ing thereof.” This sacrament is “so divine and com- 
fortable a thing to those who receive it worthily, and so 
dangerous to those who will presume to receive it un- 
worthily,” that both aspects of our relation to the Holy 
Communion must be emphasized. We shall concern our- 
selves for the present with that part of the preparation 
which is included in the notion of repentance. 

The need of repentance is an universal need of the 
human race, and it is universally felt. Men can echo the 
words of Solomon, “For there is no man who sinneth 
not.” S. John’s words meet universal approval: “If we 
say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the 
truth is not in us.” It is only the sophisticated intellect 
that denies sin, and no doubt in so doing commits the sin 
against the Holy Spirit which has no forgiveness in this 
world or the next. 

The need of repentance can be read in all religions, in 
the variety of their rites, and more especially in the rite 
of sacrifice. As we are not concerned with the history 
of religion, however, we pass that by and turn to the 
nature of repentance itself, and of Christian repentance 
in particular. The person who has been at all instructed 
in the Christian religion feels the need of repentance 
when he considers either his sin or his Saviour. Often 
it is the thought of the sin itself which is prominent, at 


THE EXHORTATIONS 257 


least consciously, in repentance. One has had certain 
ideals of life and one realizes how far one has fallen short 
of them. There is a sense of failure, and of disgrace; of 
disgust with one’s own weaknesses and the general futil- 
ity of one’s own conduct. It does not seem worth one’s 
while to consider the broader issues in one’s relation to 
God. One is simply outraged at the revelation of one’s © 
own stupidity and weakness as manifested in the power 
of habit, or the ineffectiveness and cowardice that one 
has shown in meeting a given situation. What did one 
get, one asks oneself, that was in the least an equivalent 
of what one paid? Leaving out the notion of an offended 
God, was one’s momentary indulgence, the pleasure one 
gained, the popularity that came to one, the good one 
got,—have any of these proved in the least satisfying or 
of permanent use? 

That is a common reaction from sin which we have 
committed, but it is not yet in the religious sense re- 
pentance. The vital thing at this stage is whether it 
will become repentance, or whether we will, under the 
power of temptation, go on in sin until the inner protest 
ceases, or loses force, dying down into a more and more 
faint protest of the conscience. What essentially has 
happened at this stage is not that we experience a deep 
grief at having offended God, but that we are deeply 
mortified at having offended self. It is not the love of 
God that is violated, but the love of self that is wounded. 
A good deal that passes for repentance is sorrow for self 
rather than sorrow for having injured God. I fancy that 
most of us can recall that the things which we have felt 
deepest shame about were not sins at all, but occurrences 
to which we look back with a sense of our own inade- 
quacy and futility. 


258 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


This self indeed is the strong point of repentance, or 
it may be, of revolt. The proud self finds it so difficult to 
obey anyone else that it quite often rejects what it knows 
to be the divine will. I have known a young man to 
say, “I know I am sinning, but I have no intention what- 
ever of giving it up.’ Self-indulgence bore down all 
other considerations. Or it may be the arrogance of 
opinion which defies God Himself, as in John Stuart 
Mill’s well-known protest. “If an omnipotent being can 
condemn me to Hell for refusing to believe what I see 
no reason for believing, to Hell I will go.” This, of 
course, is merely silly bravado, an extreme expression of 
the morbid self. What we need is to discover the weak- 
ness of isolation, and that our strength is brought out 
and increased by the very fact of dependence. It is not 
ungoverned power, but restrained power that attains the 
highest results. It is not the isolated self, but the self 
united to God which is powerful. As Amiel puts it, 
“Self-interest is the survival of the animal within us; 
humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.” 
The animal manifests itself even after we think we have 
made a surrender of self, in a certain self-will and ob- 
stinacy in clinging to opinion. “Obstinacy is  self-will 
asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It 
is persistent without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity 
of self-love, substituted for the tenacity of reason and 
conscience.” 

That form of revolt from past conduct, which is dis- 
gust with self, may very well be the initial step to a true 
repentance. It may result in the first place in a review of 
our lives, a calm reconsideration of them, leading to a 
confession of their failure. The confession of our fail- 
ure towards God, whatever may be our success manward, 


THE EXHORTATIONS 259 


is a very bitter thing to face, but it may be the begin- 
ning of a very wonderful thing. Failure is often but 
the finding out of the truth about ourselves. To discover 


The soil’d glory 
And the trailing wing 


is a moment of intense bitterness and disillusion, but it 
may end in the prostration of the penitent before the 
feet of God. 


Better in bitterest agony to lie, 

Before Thy throne, 

Than through much increase to be lifted high, 
And stand alone. 


It was when the prodigal came to himself that he began 
to think of home and father. It is no doubt humiliating 
that it should be so, but it is often the abject failure of 
our own plan that turns us to the love of God. We have 
seen it often, have we not? that proud shaking off of 
“restraints,” that assertion of ability to manage our own 
affairs, that restlessness under the pressure of spiritual 
principle, ending in utter revolt, and then the collapse 
some time in the future; it may be a far future. The 
priest remembers the faces looking through the grating 
of the confessional: those broken voices saying, “Father, 
I have not made my confession for ten, fifteen, twenty 
years.” Or he remembers those beds where men and 
women lie dying, and at last confessing the emptiness of 
life they had been leading. They come back from far 
countries, those lives now confessing their failure. They 
come back with empty bellies which the husks have not 
satisfied, with repressed hungers now at last permitted to 


260 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


come to the surface. They come back saying, “I was 
never at rest. I was never really satisfied, though I 
tried to persuade myself I was. I tried to make myself 
believe that my situation was peculiar. That my 
temperament demanded what others could do without. I 
tried to lay the fault on nature, on circumstance, on any- 
thing but my own selfish will, but now at last God has 
told me the truth.” 


I gave thee of Mine own creative power 

With winged imagination for thy dower; 

That which thou wilt thou canst: no seed of thought 
E’er sank into thy soul, but sprang to flower, 


And fruited, or for blessing or for ban; 

Yet, when thou com’st the harvest field to scan, 
“Some enemy,” thou say’st, “Hath planted tares!” 
I tell thee nay; thou art thyself the man. 


The sense of failure may lead men to despair, or it 
may lead men to repentance. Lead to it, because the 
sense of failure in itself is in no sense repentance. It 
may open one’s eyes to the need of something outside 
self, to the fact that a self-centered and a self-supported 
life is inadequate to the demands made upon it. But 
that is not the same thing as having found the mystical 
support which is adequate to our needs. It sets us on 
the path of discovery perhaps, but no more. 

There is another experience which sometimes acts as a 
stimulus to repentance, but which, like failure, is far in- 
deed. from being repentance. That is fear. There are 
moments in every life, no matter how careless it may be, 
when it is compelled to face the failure, to realize what 
death means, and to ask, what then? After death, 


THE EXHORTATIONS 261 


what? There are no doubt many whose imagination is 
so poor, or whose mentality is so low, that this thought 
makes but a momentary impression. There are many, 
too, who succeed habitually in pushing the intrusive 
thought away, but sometimes it comes with force, and I] 
fancy more often, and with more insistence than we 
would infer from men’s conversation and conduct. The - 
human race is a race of “bluffers” and those thoughts 
which are disagreeable they hide out of sight. They 
oftentimes succeed in “bluffing” themselves into a con- 
viction that they do not believe what actually they do 
believe. Many a blustering infidel really believes in God 
and fears death. 

Yet there come times when the future insists on being 
considered. Other men die, and we have to attend their 
funerals. We fall ill, and we question ourselves whether 
the illness is unto death or no. Or it may not be the 
thought of death which brings us face to face with 
reality. It may be the stirrings of conscience. Con- 
science frequently sleeps a long time and is then sud- 
denly awakened, it may be by some new sin, or by some 
arrow of God which succeeds in piercing the armor of 
our self-satisfaction. For God, too, constantly “draws 
His bow at a venture,” and now and again a flying shaft 
hits the joint of the harness. Then are men troubled as 
a dreamer is troubled by ill dreams. Then they stir un- 
easily in the drugged sleep which habitually is theirs and 
awaken to find the eyes of God fixed on them. Then 
fear seizes them and they seek where deliverance can 
be found. And this too may be the impulse which sends 
them seeking the road to God, but still it is not re- 
pentance. Fear that is only fear of consequences, which 
is aroused by the selfish consideration of what may pos- 


262 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


sibly happen to us, must be transformed into something 
better before it can lead us to the feet of God. 

In order truly to repent we have in some sense, and 
to some degree, to see God. It is the vision of God and 
of our contrast with it that sends us to our knees. I 
do not, of course, mean the saint’s vision of God, the 
vision which is the cOnsummation of the life of union, but 
the child’s vision of the Father, which, however dim, is 
still clear enough to rouse in him the meaning of the 
relation which is his. This is that vision which came to 
the prodigal among the swine, the inrush of what father 
meant and his own unworthiness as son. It is that last 
which is the hopeful sign. Had the prodigal thought of 
home as a place to which he had a right, as a place that 
he might go to at any time and be restored to the old 
footing, as a place of refuge when he was tired of the 
harlots and the pigs, there would have been no hope 
for him. Hope lay in the fact that his vision was not of 
a child restored to his old privileges, but a servant suf- 
fered to share the warmth and the food to which he had 
forfeited all title. | 

“T am no more worthy to be called thy son.” That is 
the best starting-point, for it implies an understanding of 
the gulf that sin has dug between the sinner and God, a 
gulf which only God can bridge. And from that atti- 
tude of soul can arise the vision of God bridging the 
distance which the sinner now feels is so great. The 
aroused thought is now carried away from self to the 
contemplation of God. Does He really forgive? What 
ground has one for thinking that He does? And even 
if He forgives on occasion, will He, can He, forgive 
such a one as I? Have I not put myself out of the 
reach of any possible forgiveness? 


THE EXHORTATIONS 263 


Answers have to be found to these questions, and it 
is as well that they should not be found too easily; that 
we should not get too superficial a notion of the divine 
attitude towards sin. There is a certain sentimental 
preaching of the divine mercy and forgiveness which is 
well calculated to make the sinner indifferent to sin 
rather than repentant. We get from such preaching a 
notion of God as being so anxious to forgive that He 
does not take much note whether the sinner is repentant 
or no. He takes his professions at their face value. 
But repentance is something more than acknowledging 
the fact that one is a sinner; it implies the detaching of 
one’s self from sin, a detachment that at the time is real, 
even if later there be a relapse. It is of vast importance 
that the sinner should take a very serious view of the 
effects of sin, and that repentance is not a light-hearted, 
acknowledgment that we have been wrong in the past, 
with an expectancy that God will overlook it. 

I think it would help to such a recognition of the 
gravity of sin if we were to insist more than we do upon 
the meaning of the temporal penalty of sin. We are 
told to repent and confess and that we go away from the 
confessional forgiven. That is blessedly true; but it is 
also true that we go away with some of the temporal 
penalty of sin to pay. It may be in the way of physical 
suffering which has been induced by the manner of our 
past life. It may be in the way of intellectual limitation 
which our neglect of prayer has brought upon us. Cer- 
tainly it will be in the immaturity of spiritual develop- 
ment which is the result of the neglect of God and His 
will, The best of us go out of this world immature, 
and what then will be the state of those who are saved 
“so as by fire?’ We cannot help the conclusion that 


264 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


from many of the saved the capacity for the vision of 
God is far removed. 

That is the significance of Purgatory, is it not? It is 
the state of the imperfect saved. The state of discipline 
and training of the spiritually immature. And although 
it is a better state than the state we are now in, although 
it be without temptations, although it have the conscious- 
ness of salvation and a clearer vision of God, I do not 
think that we ought to deceive ourselves into thinking it a 
mild form of Heaven. A clear understanding of our 
own deficiencies and failures, an unveiled picture of our 
own past stupidities and sins, cannot be a pleasant thing 
to contemplate. And although these are in some sense 
compensated for by the fact that we are saved, they still 
remain a pain that will increase with our increased per- 
ception of what we were offered, and of what we actually 
are. It will not be the wrath of God which will inflict the 
punishment on the awakened soul; it will be the unveil- 
ing of God’s love which will cut deep as we remember 
how we have scorned it. 

It is well for us then, when we are trying to learn 
repentance as a practical spiritual exercise and find our 
thought of it rather perfunctory, when we recall our 
frequent confessions and absolutions, to recall that the 
next stage of existence to which we shall pass will be that 
stage of purification in which we shall suffer as well as 
rejoice; remembering this, we shall be led to a deeper 
penitence and to severer self-discipline, that we may be 
so spiritually advanced as to need less of discipline in the 
coming world. The temporal penalties of sin can in 
some sense be dealt with here. Prayer and good works 
and spiritual exercises of all sorts are available means 
of present spiritual progress. It seems to me at least 


THE EXHORTATIONS 265 


that if we actually understood this we should be spir- 
itually more energetic. Many of us still linger under the 
obsession of an ancestral Protestantism and ignore, even 
when we have learned not to deny, the fact and nature 
of Purgatory. Many, too, are lazily content with the 
thought that it is enough to be saved, whatever may come 
after. It might be well to ask oneself whether such in- . 
difference could be in any safe way considered a state 
of salvation. More energy and a wider scope in re- 
pentance is what we all need“ A conviction that al- 
though God, and God alone can forgive sins, that does 
not leave us without further responsibility than the facile 
acknowledgment of sin. After absolution there succeeds 
a work of reconstruction, and in that work, while the 
grace of God supplies needed energy, we have largely 
to act. A boy does not become a skilled carpenter when 
his father gives him a tool box and neither do we be- 
come saints when God absolves us and gives us His 
grace. The discipline of character remains to be ac- 
complished which may be otherwise described as the life 
of repentance and good works. 

The ultimate motive of repentance, of course, is to be 
found in the love of God. That is not generally where 
we begin in the way of repentance but where we end, if 
we go on to a full and complete repentance. We begin 
with some partial and preparatory repentance, a re- 
pentance which is founded rather in our own sense of 
need, or our own feeling of the sinfulness of certain 
actions, rather than in the understanding of the effect of 
our actions on our relation with God. When we try 
to analyze the motive I think we find that we rarely, if 
ever, start from a conception of sin as an offense against 
the love of God. We start rather from this or that sin 


266 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


as an offense against a vaguely conceived moral law. It 
is the notion of law violated rather than of love wounded 
that is at the root of our repentance, and I believe that 
in that fact lies the explanation of the common feeling 
on the part of the penitent when actually growing in 
depth and earnestness that his repentance is defective, 
or, as he usually phrases it, “I don’t seem to be really 
sorry for my sins.” It is indeed extremely difficult to 
feel deep sorrow for having broken a law, and even when 
the law is God’s law, the expression of the divine mind, 
sorrow is not apt to be very deep. 

What is needed is a clearer conception that in sin and 
repentance we are dealing with a person. That back of 
what we tend to conceive as law there is a personal love 
for us, of which the law is the expression. In other 
words, that the mind of God is expressive of a will 
which seeks our highest good and is pointing the way by 
which the good may be attained. There is nothing ar- 
bitrary in the will of God. What we conceive as law is 
not a body of rules imposed on us for the sake of dis- 
cipline, or a set of enactments which might as well be 
anything else. God’s will for us is what it is because the 
way that it points is the way of our perfecting. It is 
the only way by which we can achieve our ideal. S. 
Paul states it broadly when he says, “This is the will of 
God, even your sanctification.” 

The love of God seeks that end, our sanctification, and 
it is a love that declines to be thwarted. When sin in- 
terposes and tries to defeat this end of love, love seeks 
new ways of expression, seeks new means of overcoming 
the opposition of sin, seeks new allurements by which 
to draw its wanderers home. Therefore the love of 
God shrinks from no sacrifice, but throws itself into the 


THE EXHORTATIONS 267 


breach made by sin, and reveals itself as the Incarnate 
Love of Bethlehem and Calvary. Men are appalled and 
stumble before the mystery of evil, but to me the ul- 
timate mystery of the universe is the mystery of good. 
That “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”’ 
The mystery in this is the love of God which passionately 
seeks to rescue those who do not care to be rescued, © 
which loves our souls to the very death, the souls which 
we do not care enough for to sacrifice in their interests 
the passing gratification of the senses. We whine like 
stupid children, “Why should I give up this pleasure, or 
forego that indulgence?” in the very face of a God “Who 
loved us and gave Himself for us”; Who, when we had 
no possibility of Heaven, “so loved the world that He 
gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
on Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.’ It 
is understandable that a man should balance sin against 
law and disregard law and penalty. It is inconceivable 
that a man should see sin in the light of the Cross, and 
not go away with a broken heart. 

A true repentance then, repentance in the full and 
complete sense of the word, is founded in the perception 
and the meaning of “God is love.’ It is the heartbroken 
cry of the child as he turns to the Father, now seeing 
his own act revealed in its result, the wound to the heart 
of God. Because deep and true repentance, which the 
spiritual writers call true contrition, is thus an act of 
love meeting love, of two hearts flowing into union. The 
Church has always regarded it as in itself the very aboli- 
tion of all bars between the soul and God. True con- 
trition is complete absolution. “If in the examination 
at night I say to Almighty God with all my heart that it 
grieveth me, O my God, that I have offended Thee, be- 


268 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


cause I love Thee above all created things, and would 
willingly have lost them all rather than have sinned; and 
with Thy grace I purpose to confess all my sins, with 
a determination never more to return to them, at that very 
instant I am justified. And if that night I should die 
suddenly without being able to confess myself, although 
I had committed many mortal sins, I should not be con- 
demned for them.” ? 

No doubt we need, in order to repent, to see self. An 
understanding of self is all-important, but it is not all- 
sufficient. We need also to see God. The vision of 
self may very well sink us in hopelessness and despair, 
but with the vision of God hope returns. With it too 
comes stimulation. It is not the man who sees his faults 
who therefore repents. There are multitudes of men 
who have no doubt of their own sinfulness who still are 
not moved to repentance. The motive of repentance 
comes when they see God, and that God is love. “Truly,” 
says Rolle of Hampole, “he who is stirred with busy love, 
and is continually with Jesus in thought, full soon per- 
ceives his own faults, the which correcting, henceforward 
he is ’ware of them; and so he brings righteousness 
busily to birth, until he is led to God and may sit with 
heavenly citizens in everlasting seats. Therefore he 
stands clear in conscience and is steadfast in all good 
ways, the which is never noyed with worldly heaviness, 
nor gladdened with vain glory.” 

True repentance, we recall, is a form of suffering, 
therefore we may expect that the suffering will be, in 
some degree at least, a measure of the repentance. If 
we can rise from a careful self-examination, having seen 


1De Ponte, Meditations I, 308. 


THE EXHORTATIONS 269 


ourselves as those who have wounded the love of God, 
and yet be ourselves unmoved by the vision, we may well 
doubt of the depth of our repentance, of the sincerity of 
our love. We suffer in proportion as we love. If love 
goes deep so does suffering take us down into the depths. 
It is this inner suffering which springs from love which 
is so difficult to bear. The martyrs bore the extremity of ° 
physical suffering because they were sustained by the 
love of God shed abroad in their hearts. And it is the 
same love which reveals to us at once the appalling nature 
of our sin and the readiness and sufficiency of the remedy. 
Therefore it is that the Sacred Heart is, in a certain way, 
a more appealing revelation of love than the Crucifix. 
Our Lord’s final agony on the Cross came in a hiding of 
love, in a veiling of the Father’s face. “Thou didst 
hide Thy face from me, and I was troubled.” He bore 
the physical agony without shrinking. He cried out in 
agony at the sense of the loss of the Presence; and in 
so far as we have attained spiritual perception we are 
driven to repentance by the same awful discovery that 
our sins have hid His face from us: that we have 
separated ourselves from the love of God. 

There is of course but one test of true repentance. 
The sincere effort to reform. That facile repentance 
which has no issue in a change of life, undertaken with 
a decided will, has little, if any, value. We may easily 
deceive ourselves as to what we actually intend, but the 
days as they pass will show the sincerity of our pro- 
fessions. It may be a long and desperate struggle, but 
struggle there must be, a struggle till we have attained 
success, if so be that we are led by the love of God. 
Disgust with self, fear of consequences, sense of a vio- 


2709 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


lated law, all these may well be overlaid by custom and 
die out, but if there is a true love of God, if we have 
understood the yearning of the Sacred Heart over sin- 
ners, then shall we persevere to the end and be saved. 


THE FOURTEENTH MEDITATION 
THE CONFESSION 


The Catholic teaching has always been that, normally, 
sacramental confession is necessary for post-baptismal 
mortal sin. The office for the Visitation of the Sick in the 
English Prayer Book orders that the sick person be given 
an opportunity for confession, and it is interesting to know 
that the canons of the Irish Episcopal Church, until quite 
recently, commanded the clergy to give notice of hours for 
confession on the day preceding the offering of the Holy 
Sacrifice, the priest’s presence in church for that purpose 
being further emphasized by tolling the church bell. But 
even those who are free from serious sin will have slight 
faults to reproach themselves with, and for these, and to 
renew our contrition for past sins, the form of General 
Confession before communion is provided. It is borrowed 
largely from a Lutheran compilation, Hermann’s Consulta- 
tion. In the Roman mass, when it comes time for 
communions, those about to receive, or the server on their 
behalf, say the Confiteor and the celebrant pronounces ab- 
solution. 


Let us listen to the words of the Publican: 


God, be merciful to me, a sinner. 


Let us picture: 


HE Publican praying in the Temple. One won- 
© ders if he is conscious of the surprise that his 
presence creates. To the Pharisaic observer a Publican 
is out of place in the Temple. This is the house of God— 
of’ the’ Pharisee’s God. It 1s hardly the place:-for a 
Publican! It is the place where one thanks God for 
one’s virtues—that one is not as other men are—not 
the place of those in whom virtue is conspicuously lack- 
ing. To the Pharisee the presence of the Publican has 
the value of a shadow to emphasise the high light of his 
own righteousness. The Publican is, no doubt, ob- 
livious to all this. That he is, as it were officially, a 
sinner, does not trouble him; what troubles him is that 
his own conscience confirms the fact, if not the details, 
of the Pharisaic judgment. But though he is a sinner 
he has the fundamental quality of the saint—the quality 
so lacking in the Pharisee—humility. See him as he 
stands afar off, with bowed head, absorbed in the con- 
viction of his own unworthiness in God’s sight. Hear 
the murmured words: God be merciful. All the life 
and movement of the Temple court swirls about him, and 
he does not see it. Around him men stand praying, and 
he is unconscious of them. He has hid himself in the 
silence and loneliness of his own soul, hardly daring to 

273 


274 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


think of God. One likes to think of that figure, sol- 
itary amid the crowd, not as one of our Lord’s imagina- 
tive creations, but as one that had some day caught His 
eye and revealed its significance to Him Who knows what 
is in man. He sees in this complete self-abandonment of 
the Publican, the opportunity of God. God can enter 
this soul that is empty of self. “Where there is nothing, 
there is God.” So this man went down to his house 
justified. 


Consider, first, 


That the fascination that the figure of the Publican 
holds for us lies in its entire simplicity. There are very 
few words spent in drawing his portrait, but it is drawn 
for eternity. We never forget the impression of it. No 
better illustration can be found of our Lord’s saying, 
Except ye be converted, and become as little children, 
ye Shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. He may 
have been a very great sinner indeed; but were his sins 
many or few, we feel that he now stands quite apart from 
them—they are abandoned, though the shadow of them 
still abides. He hesitates to approach God, even while 
the love of God is drawing him on. He does not cling 
to sin—he has got through with that—but he wonders 
whether the God whom he has wounded will be recon- 
ciled to him. That is the danger of all who want to 
turn to God from sin—a fear that God will not turn 
to them. We never succeed in grasping the greatness of 
the love of God. God has never turned away; His atti- 
tude has always been the same—that of seeking love. 
And it is when that love finds the sinner that he moves 
in response to it, till it grows in him and struggles with 
his shame and fear, and finally conquers both and brings 


"HE CONFESSION 275 


the sinner to God’s feet with his simple prayer for par- 
don: God be merciful to me, a sinner. Then love has 
done its work and won its victory and illicited its response, 
and perfect love casteth out fear. It is when our world 
is reduced to the two terms, the God who loves and the 
soul that tremblingly responds to that love, that the per- 
fect act of penitence is accomplished. The penitent no 
sooner whispers, “I have sinned,” than the reply comes, 
“The Lord also hath put away thy sin”; and the Spirit of 
holiness returns to the house from which it had been 
driven and the surrendered and purified soul enters the 
peace of justification. 


Consider, second, 


Whether we have achieved this entire simplicity of 
relation with our heavenly Father. Our penitence is so 
often a troubled and fearful penitence. These are justi- 
fied only in the one case—that we still cling to sin. 
There is an attempted penitence that fails because it 1s 
unly half-hearted: the soul is drawn by the sense of sin 
to confession, but it remains troubled by the knowl- 
edge that sin still has a strong hold upon it. That 
penitence may be quite sincere, but the love that inspires 
it is not strong enough to cast out fear. Therefore the 
torment remains. There are states of mind in which 
we must be convinced that we can do a thing before we 
can bring ourselves to action. In this case, we need to 
be convinced that the power of God in a surrendered 
life is greater than the power of sin, if we are to yield 
ourselves and abandon fear; to be convinced that all we 
have to do is to love God enough to have the bands of 
our sins fall away. We find it so hard to let go sin and 
cling only to God. Say what we will, there remains an 


276 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


undertone of conviction that God will not save us from 
sin without our help. We remain convinced that we 
must assert ourselves. But the fact is that all the help 
we can give, all the cooperation we can offer, is the 
abandonment of self. When the self ceases to assert 
itself and lies still in God’s arms, it is safe. When it 
stops thinking of self and thinks only of God, God will 
reclaim it. If the eye be single—if it rest on but one 
object, the Sun of Righteousness—the whole body will be 
full of light. We know, do we not, that in those moments 
when we give ourselves utterly to God, all the strength of 
sin has been broken? Even the long-accustomed temp- 
tations lose their power of appeal. There have been 
such moments of quiet in all our lives: why is it that 
they are not our habitual state? Why do we fall back 
under the dominion of fear? Perfect love casteth out 
fear. 


Let us then pray, 


For true contrition. Pray for complete surrender to 
God. Pray, God be merciful to me, a sinner—and leave 
yourself in His arms. 

We beseech Thee, Almighty God, to behold our 
prayers, to pour out upon us Thy loving tenderness ; that 
we who are afflicted by reason of our sins, may be re- 
freshed by the coming of our Saviour; through the same 
Jesuse Christ, our Lord. 


THE GENERAL CONFESSION 


I am not proposing to discuss the legitimacy of sacra- 
mental confession in the Anglican Communion. Anyone 
who has a Bible and a Prayer Book, and can read them, 


THE CONFESSION 277 


can easily satisfy himself on this matter. If the 
Anglican Communion did not teach sacramental con- 
fession it would be at the expense of repudiating all the 
past on unity with which it bases its claims to Catholicity. 
What, however, is beyond doubt is that much of the 
teaching of the Anglican clergy has been disloyal to their 
own formularies and lamentably lax in their own prac- 
tices. While I am not prepared to say that an enforced 
reception of the Sacrament of Penance is desirable, there 
can be no doubt that the withdrawal of pressure at the 
Reformation has had results of the worst kind. The 
authorities of the Church have tolerated, and indeed 
participated in, the most flagrant denial of the express 
teaching of the Church, with the natural result that this 
sacrament fell into desuetude, practiced by only a few 
zealous individuals here and there. In this, as in other 
matters, the last century has seen a steady advance, until 
to-day the administration of the sacrament has become in 
a large part of the Church a matter of course. 

Out of this laxity of the past there arises an interest- 
ing question, largely perhaps academic, as to the binding 
force of the universal teaching of the Church as to the 
need of sacramental confession for the absolution of 
mortal sin. A remnant of that teaching is embodied in 
the Exhortation in the direction that if any “cannot quiet 
his own conscience” he is to resort to a “minister of 
God’s Word, and open his grief,’ that, according to the 
English book, “he may receive the benefit of absolution, 
together with ghostly council and advice to the quieting 
of his conscience and the avoiding of all scruple and 
doubtfulness.” This the American book eviscerates by 
leaving out the word absolution; but I suppose hardly 
succeeds in effecting any fundamental change in Catholic 


278 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


theology by so doing. The question raised by such 
tampering with doctrine is not whether Catholic theology 
has altered but whether the body making the change re- 
mains inside of the Catholic name. 

It cannot be held that in the meaning of the Exhorta- 
tion in the Prayer Book a man who can by any means 
still the protest of “conscience may dispense with sacra- 
mental confession. The matters in question, concerning 
which a man cannot quiet his own conscience, are mortal 
sins; and by the traditional teaching of the Church these 
could be effectively dealt with in the normal case only in 
the confessional. What then are we to think was the 
state during this period of laxity of the man in mortal 
sin who did not make his confession? I suppose that 
we can say that his neglect of sacramental means was 
excused because of his ignorance, an ignorance which 
was due, not to his personal neglect, but to the laxity in 
teaching of the Church authorities. Such a man’s re- 
sponsibility would become active with the acquisition of 
knowledge, and we cannot believe that to-day individuals 
who have knowledge of the teaching of the Church as 
distinguished from the teaching of individual bishops and 
priests are excused from the use of the sacrament of 
penance in case of mortal sin. Perhaps the question 
might not be uselessly raised as to whether the ineffective- 
ness of the Anglican Communion, which has been so 
stressed and lamented during the past few years, may not 
be due not so much to insistence on “outworn creeds” 
which fail to meet the needs of the modern mind, as to 
neglect of the use of the sacraments which are the divinely 
appointed means of union and communion with God. 
Possibly a revival of sacramental life would do more for 


THE CONFESSION 279 


the Church than a repudiation of belief in the Virgin 
Birth and the Resurrection. 

It is here assumed, then, that it is the teaching of the 
Catholic Church that it is an obligation for all who have 
sinned mortally to seek absolution in the Sacrament of 
Penance, and although it be true, as it was pointed out in 
the preceding meditation, that a perfect act of Charity 
results in the forgiveness of sin, the belief that we have 
made such an act does not justify the neglect of the 
Sacrament. For one thing the rule of the Church is ex- 
plicit and cannot be set aside because of what we believe 
ourselves to have done. We are bound to external 
obedience, even though we are convinced that in a given 
case it is not absolutely necessary internally. Further- 
more, while there is no doubt of the cleansing power of 
Charity, it can hardly be a safe conclusion that one has 
in a particular case, and with reference to a particular 
sin, made such an act. Self-judgment of that sort is 
extremely temerarious. It was precisely this taking of 
matters into their own hands and passing on their own 
case that led men to the gross abuse of the neglect of 
Penance. When men asserted that they “wanted no man 
between their soul and God,” they really asserted that 
they needed no man between their soul and God, and in so 
doing repudiated the whole sacramental system of the 
Church and, by implication, the whole principle of medita- 
tion, which is the very meaning of the Incarnation itself. 
It is no wonder that the outcome has been the denial of 
the Incarnation and of the very Divinity of our Lord. 

Faithful children of the Church will not raise questions 
as to the actual obligation to confess in a special case. 
Such questions melt away in the heat of love, which is the 


280 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


relation of the child to the Father. The disobedient child 
is surely not in an ideal state if he raises the question, 
“Do I have to ask my Father’s forgiveness for the wrong 
I have done?” Surely love drives the child to the 
father’s arms without raising any questions of obligation, 
and love drives the penitent to the arms of God, his 
Father ; drives him to that means which is the expression 
of the Father’s pardoning love. There is no question 
here of obligation. To ask about obligation is really to 
put the matter on a wrong basis. The question here is 
of privilege: not must I confess, but may I confess? Is 
the love of the Father really accessible to me, a sinner? 

And as we consider the practical action, not the obliga- 
tion of confession, but the privilege of it, we do not raise 
any question as to what has to be confessed. Textbooks 
no doubt raise such questions, and decide that at least all 
mortal sins must be confessed; but in the making of one’s 
confession one is guided, not by the text of a book, but by 
the impulse of love. One simply lays bare one’s whole 
spiritual state before God. One would in fact feel 
rather doubtful of the penitence of one whose self- 
examination consisted largely in assorting sins with refer- 
ence to the degree of their guilt, in order to determine 
what to confess and what not. That would imply a state 
of soul that was far from one filled with regret for hav- 
ing wounded the love of God. 

The normal confession, then, raises no question of great 
or little, mortal or venial, but is an act of love laying 
bare its life to the Father in the act of love. Nothing 
we have to tell seems trivial, for the transforming power 
of love lends importance to the trivial itself. Anything 
that indicates the deflection of our will from the Father’s 
we want to lay before Him that He may cleanse this 


THE CONFESSION 281 


erring will of ours by His pardon. It is well in all this 
to forget as far as may be the priest, the representative 
of God, lest we be turned aside in our confidence of love 
by the intruding thought of what his opinion would be. 
This regard for the opinion of the priest is one of the 
difficulties we have to overcome. ‘This is especially an 
Anglican difficulty, because of the close association of the 
people with their clergy in social relations. Knowing 
them so well outside the confessional they are quite 
likely to think of their opinions inside it. This, to be 
sure, results differently in different individuals. Some 
dislike to confess to a priest they know; others prefer it; 
but both result in the same fact, an undesirable intrusion 
of the personality of the priest, in such cases actually 
fulfilling the Protestant notion, and “getting between the 
soul and God.” This intrusion of personality must be 
resisted by both priest and penitent. The priest who 
draws people by personal qualities needs to be very much 
on his guard lest he, and not the God whom he represents, 
is the attracting power. And the penitent needs to guard 
against the intrusion of purely human and _ personal 
motive in the sacrament. The tendency, especially a 
tendency of women, to hunt out a confessor who is 
“sympathetic” is disastrous, leading not so much to con- 
fession of sin as to long conversations, nominally about 
the spiritual life, but in fact debauches of sentiment. We 
shall have something more to say of this relation when 
we come to speak of direction. 

Simplicity is the quality to be sought in a confession. 
The confessions of children are delightful because of 
that quality. They go directly to the point. They 
enumerate sins without explanations, or excuses, or cir- 
cumlocutions of any sort. They always know what they 


282 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


have done, and if the confessor is doubtful upon any point 
a direct question elicits a direct answer. With the adult 
it is oftentimes different. He, or more commonly she, 
is terribly involved, and finds difficulty in expressing the 
commonest fact. Circumlocutions take the place of 
straightforward statements. Excuses are proffered or 
hinted at. Indirection and allusion take the place of 
frankness. An absolute impossibility of clear, direct state- 
ment is frequent: and all this without any design of con- 
cealment or evasion. It is a mental habit growing out of a 
lack of practice in self-examination, at least in great meas- 
ure. The person who has been to confession from child- 
hood usually remains childlike in his confessions. He re- 
tains the clear and direct statement which he learned when 
he was young. Those who come to the sacrament in adult 
life experience more difficulty in clearness and directness, 
because of their lack of understanding of themselves. In 
particular they find it difficulty to let a statement stand 
barely for what it is worth. Standing out that way it 
looks to them untrue ; it will produce a false impression on 
the confessor, therefore they begin to limit, to explain, 
to modify. The result, instead of making the original 
statement clearer, is that it becomes confused, and the 
confessor is doubtful of just what happened. This 
tendency to explanation is perhaps the worst fault in the 
penitent. It is a fairly clear indication of either one of 
two things: either of a hopelessly confused mind that 
cannot understand itself and its own workings, or of an 
egotistic temperament which is concerned not so much 
with the confession as an act of sorrow before God as 
with the impression that will be left on the mind of the 
confessor. 


THE CONFESSION 283 


Another temperament very difficult to deal with is the 
scrupulous temperament. With this temperament nothing 
is ever settled; no confession is ever finished. There is 
for one thing a hopeless confusion of values. Every- 
thing that has happened is on the same plane, from a 
malicious lie to the omission to say Grace. Again, there 
is endless explanation implying a doubt of the intelligence, 
or of the sanity, of the confessor. ‘There is constant 
return upon the same fact for fear that all the bearings 
of it have not been clearly impressed. There is a 
wretched habit of going back to proceeding confessions 
and repeating what has already been dealt with, through 
fear that the penitence has not been adequate, or the con- 
fession valid. There is endless weighing of trifles, lest 
some lurking sin should pass undiscovered; and along 
with all this there is not infrequently a surprising ig- 
norance of the true spiritual state. It is of course to be 
expected that the scrupulous temperament will be fretful 
and complaining, carping and critical, upset by trifles 
and making constant unreasonable demands on others. 
One knows people who seem to rake the hidden corners 
of their souls for a wandering thought in prayer, or the 
forgetfulness of the Guild Collect, who are oblivious to 
the fact that in their relations to others they are con- 
stantly critical and complaining. Such persons need a 
different sort of self-examination than that to which they 
are accustomed. They need pretty sharp discipline from 
their directors. It is a difficult matter, no doubt, to see 
oneself clearly, but it is fairly obvious that if we can find 
in our own lives only the most trivial of faults then we are 
quite possibly looking in the wrong place. We may 
unfortunately concern ourselves with minute corners of 


284 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


life and miss the knowledge of its broad spaces. In 
self-examination it is dangerous to specialize on certain 
varieties of sin. 

Confession is the confession of definite acts, meaning 
by an act that to which the will has definitely consented. 
Mere passing thoughts to which no assent has been given 
are not matters of confession and when there is doubt 
about consent the penitent as a rule had better take the 
benefit of the doubt. Habitual temptations of thought, 
though not yielded to, may possibly need the advice of a 
skilled director, but need not be confessed. The scru- 
pulous should uniformly take the benefit of the doubt. 
The careless would do better to confess everything, even 
the doubtful. There is no need to attempt the classifica- 
tion of sins, and a good deal of danger. That has been 
pointed out in attempting a division into mortal and ve- 
nial. Such classification is for the benefit of the moral 
theologian, and not of the penitent. 

Confession, to be of much benefit as a spiritual dis- 
cipline, should be regular. What I mean is this: It is 
possible to look at confession from a twofold point of 
view. We may regard it simply as a sacrament of the 
forgiveness of sins, to be resorted to by those who are in 
mortal sin. In this case its use will be determined by 
the frequency of grave sin, by the occurrence of a dis- 
turbed conscience which cannot quiet itself. Confession 
in this case will be frequent or infrequent, according to 
the circumstances, but we may note in this connection 
that confession before great feasts only is not to be 
commended. When you try to think out what that means 
the implication seems to be that it does not matter how 
long we remain in a state of sin so that we do not receive 
the Communion in that state. If we are to use the Sacra- 


THE CONFESSION 285 


ment of Penance solely as a remedy for mortal sin, the 
remedy should be applied as soon as the sin is discovered. 
There is, of course, nothing to be said for confession be- 
fore the great feasts only. That is purely formalistic 
and lax, an observance of the letter of the law. 

But there is an entirely different point of view from 
which the Sacrament of Penance may be envisaged. 
Penance is a part of the training of the soul for eternity. 
It is one element in the discipline of the spiritual life. 
Like all sacraments, the Sacrament of Penance confers 
grace, and its reception by a soul already in a state of 
grace means an increase of grace. All that pertains to 
the sacrament, the careful self-examination, the acts of 
contrition, the humility of the confession itself, the resolu- 
tion to amend, and the thanksgiving after the absolution, 
aids the discipline of the spiritual nature of the penitent, 
and his progressive purification and acquisition of the 
Christian virtues. From this point of view, of the in- 
crease of grace and of a disciplined life, irregular penance 
is of small value. What is needed is the regular, intelli- 
gent use of the sacrament, with the view to our spiritual 
growth. A regular monthly confession is practically 
essential here: the lowest terms with which we can hope 
for much help. A more frequent confession should be 
determined upon the advice of one’s director. That ad- 
vice will be determined by our earnestness, and by our 
desire of Communion. 

Perhaps it is as well to insist here on the matter of the 
grace of the sacrament. That the spiritual nature lives 
and grows by grace, as the physical nature does by food, 
is a plain fact that seems in need of greater appreciation. 
Intermittent and disorderly feeding will soon put an end 
to our physical life, or reduce us to a_ condition of in- 


286 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


validism. Now spiritual invalidism is a_ sufficiently 
common phenomenon in the ordinary Christian congrega- 
tion and it can, with a good deal of certainty, be traced 
to a disorderly use of the sacraments. The Holy Com- 
munion is received infrequently, and without due prepara- 
tion, and the Sacrament of Penance is either not received 
at all, or is received before Christmas and Easter, or even 
before Easter alone, but there is no conception in all this 
of a regular life systematically supported, and a purpose 
of steady growth towards a clearly perceived ideal; but 
unless the latter be present anything that can resemble a 
fully formed Christian character cannot be expected. 

We are deceived, or we deceive ourselves by appear- 
ances. We adopt, in place of the Christian ideal of 
holiness, the worldly ideal of goodness. We see about 
us many “good people” who are not troubling themselves 
about the sacraments, or a supernatural life. They are 
infrequent at Communion, or they do not go at all. They 
are extremely pleasant to meet, are kind and charitable, 
in short are cultivated human beings. They would per- 
haps smile indulgently were you to ask them about con- 
fession, or perhaps they would be shocked at being 
connected even in thought with such superstition. We, 
admiring them for what they are, forget to recall what 
they are not. They are the best the world can produce, 
but they have not, and do not claim to have, any present 
and vital relation to any other world. They are natural, 
not supernatural. 

But the essential point about a Christian, no matter 
how crude he may appear in comparison with these 
finished products of the world, is that he is precisely 
supernatural. Christians have established a hold upon 
eternity. They have an outlook beyond the “flaming 


THE CONFESSION 287 


ramparts of the world.” They do not meet questions as 
to the future with a smile of tolerance, or a shrug and 
an “I don’t know.” They may be as undeveloped as you 
like, and as socially impossible as you like, but they 
possess a treasure of which the most cultivated and mod- 
ern heathen has no understanding. A school boy, who 
knelt by the side of his priest and made his first con- > 
fession, and then springing to his feet threw his arms 
about the priest and kissed him, saying, “Gee, father, 
that was great!’ had discovered a secret the most re- 
fined agnostic had missed, a secret of the grace of God. 

It is by this grace that the Christian lives, and he 
values it as he does his daily food. For the sake of it 
he is willing to rise before day to go to the early Mass 
before he goes forth to his labor. For it he is willing and 
glad to impose upon himself the discipline of daily self- 
examination and frequent confession. Sacraments to 
him mean, not badges of church-membership, or the items 
of an imposed routine, but they are doors of access to 
God; doors at which God is always knocking in His great 
desire of entrance, but doors that He will not force, but 
wait patiently for their opening. To him the sacraments 
are means of union with God; are in fact the means of 
God’s entrance into the soul. For grace is really God: 
God expressing Himself in all His love and favor in the 
spiritual nature of the Christian. Filled with this con- 
ception of the sacraments, and especially of the Sacra- 
ment of Penance, the devout Christian has none of that 
shrinking which is sometimes observed in those approach- 
ing the Sacrament of Penance, but goes to it eagerly and 
gladly as one who goes to the meeting-place where he 
shall find God. Goes no doubt realizing his sin, realizing 
it specially as a sin against love, but realizing, too, that 


288 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the very love which he has sinned against is here to meet 
him and receive him with the kiss of pardon and peace. 
To return to our starting-point. The General Confes- 
sion is a confession made by all, and in general terms. 
It is not at all in the nature of a sacramental confession, 
but rather in the nature of an act of contrition. Nor is 
the absolution following it a sacramental absolution. 
There is no sacramental absolution of sins involved in the 
action in the Communion Service, any more than there 
is in the confessions and absolutions in the daily offices 
of Morning and Evening Prayer. One now and then 
finds a person, who “does not believe in Confession,” who 
still thinks that he receives absolution through the absolu- 
tion of the Communion Office. This, of course, is a 
delusion. If there is any forgiveness received at that 
time it is because the form of the General Confession is 
made the expression of an act of contrition. Venial sin, 
to be sure, is at all times forgiven in answer to prayer. 
It does not at all follow that the General Confession is 
of no value. One may regret the interpretation given it 
as being a substitute for sacramental confession, and so 
leading people to a wrong notion of the nature of for- 
giveness. One may regret its precise place in the Com- 
munion Office, and hope for a change in position, but the 
form itself is valuable, if rightly used. As a united 
act of contrition on the part of the congregation it is 
impressive. It would be doubly so in the case of a con- 
gregation, the members of which were accustomed to 
sacramental confession, and were truly renewing their 
contrition as an immediate preparation for their approach 
to the altar. It may be said that such acts on the part 
of the whole congregation tend to become purely formal. 


= 


THE CONFESSION 289 


But any forms are liable to misuse, and formalism is not 
a quality inherent in forms, but is a spiritual attitude in 
the person using them. All that the form can do is to 
afford a channel for the expression of certain feelings. 
If the feelings are absent, there is nothing to express, 
and the form becomes dead. Still it remains true that 
the united recitation of a form tends to arouse the feel- © 
ings that it is intended to canalise. 

This tendency to arouse feelings which are dormant is 
a recognized value of forms. We do not always feel 
like praying, but we find, when we get upon our knees and 
take a book of prayers, that we can, as we say, “put our 
minds on them,” with the result that the sluggish spirit 
is aroused and we pray with increasing earnestness as 
we go on. Here, too, in this awakening power, lies 
much of the value of ejaculatory prayer, of acts of faith, 
hope, charity and contrition; indeed of all those short 
prayers which are strewn across the day. We get spirit- 
ually sluggish, and need to be awakened, and prayers of 
one sort or another will help. Others accomplish the 
same end by the repetition of texts of scripture, which 
they keep stored in their minds. The mind is a sort of 
treasury, out of which one draws according to one’s 
needs. I think that it is a common experience that those 
prayers and passages of scripture which we have memo- 
rized in the past, perhaps quite unwillingly as children, be- 
come of value to us as weapons in our spiritual armory. 
How often it is that the words of a Collect, or some verse 
of prophecy, or gospel, comes to our aid just when most 
we need it! Comes, as it seems, by a kind of inspiration, 
but really comes through the association of its meaning 
with the particular need that we at the moment experience. 


290 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


That does not mean that there is not a kind of inspiration 
in the act. No doubt God uses the weapons He finds 
prepared. 

Feeling, as often we do, dull and depressed, faced by 
the fact of our sins, and yet without deep feeling in 
regard to them, we long for the emotion of contrition, 
the stir of a wounded heart. This, to be sure, is not a 
necessity. The value of our contrition does not lie in 
our emotional reaction to our perceived state. It is 
enough that the state be perceived, and a definite judgment 
passed on ourselves. “I do not feel contrition,’ one says. 
“Ought I to make my confession in such a dead state?” 
I am always inclined to answer, especially where there is 
no mortal sin, “The adequate sign of your actual con- 
trition is that you feel the need of it, and also that you 
are ready to act in making your confession.” Still the 
actual exercise of contrition is desirable, the feeling of 
sorrow, if that be possible, and therefore we are told by 
the masters of the spiritual life that we do well to excite 
contrition by a resort to appropriate means. 

One such means is that upon which we have been 
dwelling, the recitation of certain forms which are called 
Acts of Contrition, and which one finds in all Catholic 
Manuals of prayer. The General Confession in the 
prayer book is admirable, the Prayer of Humble Access 
in its way a masterpiece. There are numbers of brief 
forms, and anyone can recall numerous texts of Scripture 
which serve the purpose. The “Comfortable Words” are 
an example at hand which brings us face to face with the 
pardoning love of God. 

Sometimes we feel that we need, or in any case would 
like, a more vivid presentation of the fact, some stimulus 
that is not purely intellectual. That, too, is easily 


THE CONFESSION 291 


attained. What better than our Crucifix? Kneel before 
that and let the meaning of it sink into the soul. The 
Crucifixion never seems to grow old. This or that form 
loses power and vividness through our familiarity with 
it, and we do well in that case to seek new forms. The 
crucifix remains with its always fresh appeal, pressing 
home to us the truth that “Jesus Christ came into the 
world to save sinners.” The crucified love stirs us as 
nothing else, reaches us with its always fresh appeal to 
association with the Victim, burning us with a sense of 
shame at having even momentarily deserted Him. 

There are times when we feel that we want to give 
greater expression to all this, and gain greater comfort 
in sorrow by the spectacle of the Crucified. What better 
then than to follow the “Way of the Cross’? It may be 
that we can go to church and “make the Stations.” Or it 
may be that what we can do is to use a set of cards of the 
Stations in our own room. It is a very good thing to 
have a set of such cards that we can set out at any time. 
We can, to be sure, use just the Gospel text, but we were 
seeking a way of special vividness as a means of arousing 
a special contrition, and the pictures are undoubtedly, 
for most temperaments, an aid to this. 

Much the same result can be accomplished by the use 
of the Rosary, recited with a longer or a shorter medita- 
tion on the Mysteries as time controls. In the Sorrowful 
Mysteries especially we seem to be associating ourselves 
with the sorrows of our Lady, and in spirit to go along 
with her up the Sorrowful Way that leads out to Calvary, 
and with her to watch the dying of her Divine Son. 

This contrition that we are striving to kindle is by no 
means an isolated quality in the life of the Christian; 
spots of darkness falling along the light path. The life 


292 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


of the Christian is a life of penitence. That is his custom- 
ary attitude. He belongs to a sinful race, and he lives in 
a sinful world, and no matter how sure he is that his own 
sins have been pardoned and put away he cannot altogether 
detach himself from his brother, nor does he so wish. 
Penitence for his own sin, and thankfulness for his 
forgiveness,—yes, that always; but constantly, too, peni- 
tence for the sins of others; of all those near and dear to 
him, of all men everywhere who forget or deny God. It 
is a part of the Christian crossbearing that he feels in- 
cessantly the sins that are all about him; that his prayers 
are full of intercessions for sinners; that the intention of 
his Masses is given to them; that his good works are 
done with their intention. Thus the life of the Christian 
is a continual Way of Sorrow, which does not mean in 
experience that he is a wearied or depressed person. On 
the contrary, he is glad and rejoices in the grace of God, 
which has enriched him, and given him not only a present 
forgiveness, but also “somewhat to offer” on behalf of 
others. This is one, and the chief, way of entering into 
the life of others and fulfilling one’s obligation as a mem- 
ber of the Body. “If one member suffer all the members 
suffer with it.’ The Christian gets rid of the tempta- 
tion to individualism when he understands his place in 
the Body, and he rejoices to offer himself on behalf of 
his brethren. 


THER FIFTEENTH MEDITATION 
THE ABSOLUTION 


The Absolution which the priest pronounces in our Mass 
is taken partly from Hermann’s Lutheran formulary, the 
Consultation, and partly from the old Latin form. 

In the First English Prayer Book all the “communion de- 
votions” (Exhortation, Confession, Absolution, Comfortable 
Words and Prayer of Humble Access) were placed together, 
after the conclusion and immediately before the communion 
of the people, for which they are a preparation. This is a 
more logical and intelligible arrangement than the one we 
now have and its restoration has been urged in many Prayer 
Book revision plans. Our American revision commission 
proposes to reunite these devotions by placing the Prayer 
of Humble Access immediately after the Comfortable Words. 


Let us listen to the words of the Gospel: 


Jesus riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments ; 
and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he 
poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the dis- 
ciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith 
he was girded. 


Let us ptcture: 


UR Lord washing the feet of the Apostles. It was 
during the passion Supper, but before the first 
Eucharist, that our Lord gave to his disciples this won- 
derful lesson. Try to see our Lord going from one 
Apostle to another, with towel and basin, washing and wip- 
ing their feet. If we had been actual onlookers at the 
scene what different emotions we should have seen written 
on the faces of these men—surprise, shrinking, mere won- 
der. We get a vivid glimpse of the drama in the expos- 
tulation of S. Peter and our Lord’s answer. ‘Thou shalt 
never wash my feet.” “If I wash thee not, thou hast no 
part in me.” “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands 
and my head.” There may have been some talk with the 
others. One would like to know what Judas said. Watch 
our Lord washing the feet of Judas—He does not shrink 
even from that; He never shrank from any work the 
Father gave Him to do: there is the same calm self- 
possession here as in all his acts. Surely these men feel 
that there is something more involved here than a mere 
washing, an act of brotherly love, telling of his union with 
295 


296 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


them. The hour was pregnant with coming events. 
Every word, every act, must have seemed part of the great 
tragedy which was developing under their eyes. Our 
Lord’s solemn words: What I do thou knowest not now, 
but thou shalt know hereafter, would have made them the 
more alert to catch hidden meanings. How eagerly they 
wait as he takes again his garments and sits down among 
them, for some word of explanation, some light to guide 
them to the meaning of his act. 


Consider, first, 


That our Lord’s words to S. Peter, in the light of the 
future, give us a clue: He that is bathed needeth not 
save to wash his feet, but ts clean every whit. There is 
a total cleansing upon which a partial soiling may super- 
vene, a soiling that in its turn needs to be removed, but 
which needs not the repetition of the bath. Our Lord 
must have been thinking of sin, of an entire absolution 
which had been the Apostles’ and of some departure from 
its perfect cleansing which yet did not require its renewal: 
a lesser cleansing in this case suffices. But the lesser 
cleansing will do nothing for those who are not already 
clean. Ve are clean, but not all: and the washing of the 
part will do nothing for the one who is not clean. For 
he knew who should betray him; therefore said he, ye are 
not all clean. Consider, that it is this mystical cleansing 
that he commends to them in the future; no ceremony of 
foot-washing to be mechanically repeated but the ministry 
of that which is in acted parable set forth. The ministry 
of forgiveness is one that they are to perform to one 
another. Whatever their sins against him he washes 
from their soul by the gift of his pardon. So are they 
to do to one another. Jf I then your Lord and Master 


THE ABSOLUTION 297 


have washed your feet, ye also, ought to wash one 
another's feet. For I have given you an example that 
ye should do as I have done to you. Vertly, verily I say 
unto you, the servant ts not greater than his lord; neither 
he that 1s sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know 
these things, happy are ye tf ye do them. Such words 
mark an abiding truth which must in the future embody - 
itself in action, in practice. Forgiveness, we shall ex- 
pect, will be one of the virtues most common among his 
disciples, and we shall expect that such forgiveness will be 
sacramental in its nature, that is, will convey the gift it 
offers. 


Consider, second, 


That the mutual forgiveness of offences as between 
Christians should be almost instinctive. There should be 
no grudging or withholding. There should be a willing- 
ness to offer forgiveness before there is a willingness to 
seek. To consider the infirmities of the weak is one of 
the duties that our religion lays upon us. It is very dif- 
ficult to ask to be forgiven even when we most want to 
be; and it is the part of a whole-hearted forgiveness to 
show readiness to forgive. We give an added force to 
this readiness to forgive others when we take the matter 
of our relation to them to our Lord in our prayers. If 
we sincerely desire to forgive, we also desire that God 
will forgive; and some of our best prayers are those 
which we offer for our “enemies.” It is the teaching 
of S. John and the constant teaching of the Church that 
certain sins of others may be forgiven in response to our 
prayers. In any case, in such prayers, we have unfolded 
our own minds to God and have become so far hke our 
Father in heaven. Such prayers cannot fail at least to 


298 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


prompt to penitence and draw to God. We need to think 
much and often of the communion of all the faithful in 
the One Body which the Church is, and of prayer as a 
mode of expression of the Body’s life. Through prayer 
life touches and influences life, and by it we shape the 
lives of others far more than we think. How many are 
the feet washed by us when we give ourselves to a time 
of intercession for blind sinners, weak sinners, ignorant 
sinners, careless sinners! And especially when the 
offence is against ourselves one feels that the very offer- 
ing of the forgiveness to God on their behalf will surely 
effect what it offers. This, of course, in the case of 
those who are bathed, that is, of those who are in a state 
to profit by such forgiveness, not the case of those who 
by mortal sin are separated from God. 


Let us, then, pray, 


For eagerness to forgive, bearing in mind the example 
of our Saviour. Let us pray that our own sense of the 
need of forgiveness may urge us to intercession for 
others. 

O Thou most clement, Who recallest the erring, Thou 
most merciful, Who despisest not sinners, we rely on 
Thine own promise, O Lord, that Thou wilt give pardon 
to the penitent. May all who seek Thee find Thee. We 
ask it of Thy mercy, O Lord and Saviour. 


THE ABSOLUTION 


The priest sitting in the confessional to receive the 
confessions of the faithful is sitting as the representative 
of God. It is quite true that none but God can forgive 
sins; but it is true in the same sense that it is true in a 


THE ABSOLUTION 299 


democracy, that none but the people can forgive crime. 
There can be no dispute as to the origin of the power. 
The practical question is, how the power is to be exer- 
cised? As the people exercise their power of pardon 
through President, Governor or Pardon Board, so God 
exercises His power of forgiveness in certain circum- 
stances through delegates: that is, through men commis- 
sioned to represent Him, through His priests. The abso- 
lution that they give is the absolution of God and conveys 
God’s pardoning grace according to our Lord’s commis- 
sion, “Whosoever sins ye remit they are remitted unto 
them, and whosoever sins ye retain they are retained”: 
a commission transmitted to all priests at their ordination. 

The priest, then, sits as judge, and in order that he may 
exercise his office it is necessary that the whole spiritual 
state of the pentitent should be submitted to him. That 
is the reason that a detailed confession is insisted upon. 
A general confession, that is, a confession in general 
terms, affords no basis for the act of judgment. The 
judge has no data upon which to found a sentence, for it 
must not be forgotten that the priest does not by any 
necessity give absolution. He must, if the circumstances 
require, refuse it. He is bound to refuse it if he knows 
that the confession is invalid, or dishonest, or if there is 
a lack of penitence, or if the penitent refuse the conditions 
imposed upon him; as, for example, that he make such 
restitution as is directed. No doubt this aspect of the 
priest’s power is commonly overlooked, because it is so 
rarely necessary to retain sin. 

This is the same power that the priest exercises in sus- 
pending persons from the sacraments, or in excommunicat- 
ing them. With us the discipline of the Church 1s so 
relaxed that excommunication is a rare thing. Under any 


300 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


efficient administration of the discipline of the Church it 
would be more frequent. Fortunately, most people re- 
alize when they are in a state in which they ought not to 
receive the sacraments, and withdraw from them of their 
own volition. There are large numbers of these “dead” 
members of the Church scattered through the community. 
For such, the Church hopes and prays for renewal. It 
is to them a great advantage if they were brought up in 
the practice of confession, because in that case they know 
precisely what to do if the Holy Spirit draws them to 
repentence. One’s experience is that there are many peo- 
ple whose instruction has been so faulty that they actually 
do not know how to repent. They have wandered away 
from their religion and are perplexed on the road back. 
But whoever has made his confession knows what the 
road is, and any priest that has heard confessions for any 
length of time knows how thankful such penitents are to 
be back. One of the great consolations of the priest- 
hood is this receiving back of the lost; this rejoicing in the 
son who is found. 

The absolution is not a naked sentence, a mere declara- 
tion of absolution, it is an integral part of the Sacrament 
of Penance, and conveys the grace of pardon. The soul 
of the sinner is not only declared to be restored to the 
favor of God, but the guilt of sin 1s done away.. The 
soul is cleansed from sin by the infusion of grace, and 
in a case of mortal sin, through which the union with 
God had been broken, that union is restored, and the soul 
once more in the full favor and love of God. 

One phase of the exercise of this power of the priest 
is that of the giving of counsel and advice. This is not 
a part of the sacrament, but is a necessity in the adminis- 
tration of justice, and in the guidance of the penitent to 


THE ABSOLUTION 301 


a better life. This matter of direction is one of the most 
important and most difficult features of the priest’s work. 
It is, of course, quite separable from the administration 
of the sacrament, and may indeed be fulfilled by the priest 
who is not the confessor of the person directed, and may 
be conducted by letter. In fact, much of the wonderful 
literature of the Church dealing with the spiritual life is ° 
made up of letters of direction. 

Every priest is qualified to give absolution. It is a 
power inherent in his office, but not every priest is quali- 
fied to act as a director, that is, in cases of difficulty. 
While, therefore, it is the normal thing that the parish 
priest should be both confessor and director, it is not a 
necessary thing. Thus the penitent is at perfect liberty 
to choose his own confessor and director wherever he will. 

He is at liberty so to do, but it is a liberty that he 
should exercise with discretion. Certainly it is the normal 
and orderly thing to make one’s confession in one’s par- 
ish church. Not to do so implies a severe criticism on 
one’s parish priest. The only ground on which one ought 
to act otherwise is the refusal of the parish priest to act 
(as sometimes happens) or a conviction of his incompe- 
tence to deal with the particular case. What on all 
grounds is to be discouraged and avoided is the senti- 
mental running about after favorite priests, commonly be- 
cause they are alleged to be “sympathetic,” or “under- 
standing.” Penitents who are looking after “sympa- 
thetic” directors probably need just the opposite type, 
need a confessor who will firmly check gossip about 
“spiritual” matters, which are in fact mere egotistical 
self-display, and who will recall the penitent to a sense 
of sin. The sort of penitents who really need sympathy 
are those humble people who do not think of seeking it, 


302 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


but who come to the confessional overwhelmed with the 
sense of sin and failure. With such, one can be as 
sympathetic as one pleases. 

It is unfortunate that with us there are so many priests 
who are wholly unqualified to act as directors. I am 
not at all thinking of those who, out of Anti-Catholic 
theory, decline to hear confessions, or those (one trusts 
very few) who, while willing to hear confessions if they 
are asked, do not themselves go to confession. I am 
thinking rather of the considerable class of young priests 
who go to confession themselves and teach their people 
to go, but whose education in moral theology has been so 
imperfect that they are unfitted to deal with any at all 
difficult cases. This is not wholly their fault, but the 
fault of the authorities of the Church, especially of those 
who are responsible for the indication of subjects in which 
candidates for Holy Orders are to be examined. The 
training of men for Holy Orders, as at present conducted, 
cannot be too severely condemned. There is very little 
that men are taught that fits them for their work, and the 
subjects which would fit them for their work are not 
taught at all, or are so taught that they might as well 
not be. From our present point of view, the subjects 
which are important are moral theology, casuistry, ascetic 
and mystical theology. I speak under correction, but I 
think that I am right in saying that nowhere in the Angli- 
can Communion is there any adequate teaching given in 
these branches of spiritual studies. The result is that 
the priest faces the work of a pastor unprepared, except 
in so far as his experience in making his own confessions 
has prepared him. 

Commonly, moreover, the young priest is put in a sit- 
uation where it is difficult for him to supplement or 


THE ABSOLUTION 303 


correct his education in these respects. The average man 
is not a student, even though he has chosen a walk in 
life which requires study for its full accomplishment. He 
finds it difficult to settle down to the routine of theologi- 
cal study, and the supposed necessities of his work are 
exposing him to continual interruptions. He finds that 
his parish care little about his intellectual growth. He - 
has no contact with his bishop. The general administra- 
tion of the Church wants him to be an administrator, a 
financier, a local representative of the central (and more 
and more centralized) administration. The parish wants 
ham tobe) av) mixer, avy live, -wire;’> a ‘good), fellow.’ 
He is invited to join the Country Club, and the Bridge 
Club, and the Masons and the Elks. He is neither in- 
vited, nor encouraged, nor desired, to be a saint by anyone 
with whom he has any contact. It is hardly to be ex- 
pected, therefore, that he should settle down to a con- 
sistent course of study in spiritual theology with the pur- 
pose, first of his own self-discipline, and then of fitting 
himself to guide the discipline of others. 

I say that under our conditions it is not to be expected 
that young priests should do these things, and therefore 
there is the more ground for rejoicing that there are those 
who do: those whose spiritual life is careful, and who 
are devoted to the understanding and the teaching of 
the Holy Catholic faith. Such are not merely content 
to teach confession, and to hear a few confessions at 
Christmas and Easter, but they are devoted to the train- 
ing of the people committed to them in the ways of a 
holy life. They set themselves determinedly to the cor- 
rections of the defects of their education, and soon find 
that the most fascinating literature in all the world is the 
literature of the spiritual life. It is among such that 


304 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


are to be found those who are competent to direct the 
lives of others. It is not to be expected that people 
will go for spiritual council, or, human nature being what 
it is, even for absolution, to priests who are worldly, or 
“good business men,’ or “able administrators.” They 
wouldn't care to speak of their spiritual lives to a club 
man, or to their banker, or insurance agent. Why, then, 
should they care to “open their grief” to the same type of 
man because he happens to wear a round collar? They 
can see no reason why they should, and more than that, 
they cannot be induced to in any great numbers. 

One consequence of that state of things is that con- 
siderable numbers of people are compelled to go out 
of their parishes for spiritual help. In churches where 
it is known that the clergy are accustomed to hear con- 
fessions there is a constant stream of people from par- 
ishes where the clergy do not, or where, while willing to 
do so, they lack the confidence which can only come 
through experience. Such unfortunate parishioners are 
obliged to curtail their spiritual experience and to make 
their confessions much less frequently than they would 
desire, and on that account to be so limited in their spirit- 
ual life as to find it very difficult to keep on. Such is the 
unfortunate case of many who move from parishes where 
they have had the privileges of the Catholic religion to 
others where such privileges are scanty, or not to be had. 

But, the question is raised, why the need of directors? 
Are not people competent to conduct their religion with- 
out the need of outside help? Does not the exercise 
of direction over souls end in the subjection to an out- 
side will, and produce a sort of spiritual invalidism? 
Such is a very common objection, and it is reinforced 


THE ABSOLUTION 305 


by many weird tales of the confessional and by historical 
anecdote. 

The patent human fact is that anything may be, and will 
be, abused ; the confessional and direction among others. 
But I fancy sufficient has been written on these themes 
during the last four centuries to dispense me from adding 
to the quantity. If we were to give up everything that 
has been abused we should be in a perfectly poverty- 
stricken state. We might make a start by giving up such 
things as the law courts, and the institution of marriage. 
It is odd the way in which so many reverse their usual 
canons of judgment when they come to deal with religion. 
They would never think of dealing with a secular institu- 
tion, or mode of action, as they deal with religious insti- 
tutions and actions. It is considered no objection to the 
continuance of educational institutions that occasionally 
teachers run off with their pupils; nor does anyone de- 
mand the abolition of the legal profession because cases 
can be cited in which lawyers have given bad advice, or 
have gotten their clients so far under their influence as 
to direct the disposal of their property, but anyone who 
can cite similar instances in the history of the Church 
feels that he has a strong, indeed irrefragable argument 
against confession and direction. 

If one passes beyond the circles in which a respectable 
recognition of the Ten Commandments, and a fair degree 
of conformity to the group ethics passes for Christianity, 
to the circles or individuals where Christianity is the most 
vital interest of life, one finds that religion has ceased to 
be considered as a simple and easy thing, and is recognized 
as an art of difficult practice, the more difficult the further 
one advances in it. Religion in fact, it is discovered, 


306 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


while resting on certain broad affirmations, and involving 
certain practices to which conformity is easy, nevertheless 
unfolds into a system of a good deal of complexity as 
one goes on. The result is that the ignorant and un- 
developed, if they are simple and childlike, can find in 
Christianity the sufficient guide and help of life; at the 
same time those whose moral and spiritual development 
is greater are not held to the level of the simple mind. 
They do not outgrow religion, rather they find that with 
their growing knowledge and experience the content of 
the simple primary conceptions of religion unfolds to 
them and they are always in the state of learners, with 
endless possibilities of advance open before them. Also, 
it is found in religion, as in all arts and sciences, that 
any advanced achievement requires a guide and teacher. 
The self-made man, in any department of life, will 
show evidence of the limitations of his makeup. We 
get at our ends best under competent direction, and this 
fact is not negatived by the possibility of quoting the 
cases of men eminent in various departments of life who 
are self-made. The normal case is the case of the taught. 

The self-taught, I say, will show all the limitations of 
their teaching, and nowhere any greater than in religion. 
To what is the religious upset of the modern world due, 
except to the theory that religion not only may be, but 
ought to be, self-taught. The right of private judgment 
was the proclamation of the right, and also of the pos- 
sibility, of the idividual conducting his own religious 
experience for himself “without anyone between his soul 
and God.” To be sure this theory was unworkable, but 
has not on that account been any the less disastrous. The 
very persons who proclaimed the theory at once set them- 
‘selves to negative it by erecting themselves into spiritual 


THE ABSOLUTION 307 


directors of the community. There is something comic 
and grotesque in the assertion of the right of private 
judgment by such religious tyrants as Luther and Calvin 
and Knox. It is hardly necessary for Protestants to ran- 
sack the annals of Papacy for cases of spiritual tyranny. 
On the one hand men who asserted the right of private 
judgment as against their Protestant leaders were per- 
secuted; on the other, the assertion led to the constant 
divisions of Protestantism itself, till it ended in mere 
spiritual anarchy. It seems, therefore, appropriate to 
ask, what has the plain man gained in the way of spiritual 
advantage by the assertion of the right of private judg- 
ment and the abolition of the “tyranny of priests” and 
the “debilitating practice of confession’? And the an- 
swer would seem to be, nothing whatever. 

We return, then, to our thesis why guiding and train- 
ing are absolutely necessary to the development of spirit- 
ual character, and that instances of what we may call 
“sporadic” spiritual development prove nothing to the 
contrary. Neither does such training tend to subject the 
pupil to the master, except to the same sense in which he 
is the subject of his secular teacher. The raw child or 
youth is necessarily dependent upon, and to an extent 
formed by his teacher, but that would seem to be what 
the teacher is for. A teacher imparts to his pupil a 
subject as it presents itself to him, and so far prepos- 
sesses and prejudices the unformed mind of the learner. 
There would be small wisdom in attempting to destroy 
such a system. Wisdom is shown in the selection of the 
teacher. I have already admitted that in my opinion 
that part of the Church in which our lot is cast is sadly 
deficient in the selection and training of priests. But 
unsatisfactory as the situation is, the present body of the 


308 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


clergy are capable of dealing with everyday situations and, 
if not ideal, are at least no worse than others. 

On the face of it, it looks as though it were true that 
the practice of direction produces, in certain cases at least, 
weakness of character and therefore that one of the ob- 
jections against it stands. A little reflection, however, 
shows that this is not a true statement of the case. The 
director is merely a convenient peg upon which weak 
characters can hang themselves. I do not suppose that 
weakness of character is a monopoly of those parts of 
the Church in which oracular confession is practised, or 
indeed of the Church at all. There are weak, clinging 
natures everywhere and I do not imagine that the latest 
and most up-to-date Liberal Conventicle is free from 
them. In fact one gathers that to-day they haunt those 
modern developments of the religious sentiment, the vari- 
ous theosophic and healing cults, much more than they 
do the confessional; but in any case they are born, not 
made, though they may no doubt be developed. 

A wise confessor or director, in dealing with such souls, 
will feel that they have as much, if not more claim on 
his time and sympathy than more robust souls. He 
must do what he can for them. He will not change their 
characters. They will remain, after he has done his best, 
dependent, but he will do what he can to instil a needed 
amount of self-reliance, to abolish scruples, to banish 
fear. His chief difficulty in dealing with such will be 
their clinging quality; their tendency to attach themselves 
to him rather than to God. There are those souls who 
cannot get on unless they feel a kind of personal attach- 
ment to their guide, whoever he may be. You see 
it in children devoted to a special teacher. You see it 


THE ABSOLUTION 309 


in the disciples who gather about a master. It is the 
root of all “schools” in philosophy and art and literature, 
and is in no wise peculiar to religion. But there is this 
difference: The founder of a philosophic or a literary 
“school” is not regarded as a man of low and selfish, if 
not immoral, motive because of his group of disciples and 
his obvious influence over them. He is not criticized 
for teaching them his own conclusions, while all the wrath 
of criticism is poured out upon the unfortunate priest 
who has “‘disciples” about him, though he be not teach- 
ing them his own opinions, but the doctrines of the Cath- 
olic Church. 

I do not suppose that there are many priests who take 
delight in the fact that they have a considerable number 
of penitents who are dependent upon them. I fancy 
most priests are sorry for such and try to guide them 
away trom themselves to God. I fancy they find this 
a great strain, but the priest understands that, no more 
than his Lord, is he sent to the “whole. He is sent to 
the sick who need a physician, and one prevalent form 
of spiritual illness is this inability to make up one’s own 
mind, and to hold to a purpose without the continual 
recurrence of doubt and hesitation. With such souls 
nothing ever gets settled, whether it be their repentance, 
or their rule of life. Questions which seemed closed fly 
open the next day, and what one thought had been ex- 
haustively discussed and finally determined is presently 
re-opened. Such souls have a weird joy in discussing 
their own morbid spirituality. It is no doubt a form of 
the raw ego, a variety of exhibitionism. Possibly the 
secular teacher finds it possible to suppress or get rid of 
such, but it is not possible for the priest. He is com- 


310 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


pelled to deal with them as best he may, to teach them to 
be a little ‘less morbid, to hold a little longer to purposes, 
to trust more to the grace of God. 

One feature of the case of such persons, the feature 
which more than any other sends them to the priest, is 
the fact that he is the only person in whom they find 
tolerance and sympathy. They can, of course, purchase 
a certain amount of these commodities from a psycholo- 
gist, but they come high. Still, many are doing so to- 
day, to the great relief of the clergy. At home, however, 
and in the circle of their acquaintance they find little 
tolerance and less sympathy, so they are driven forth 
to seek it elsewhere. The very person who complacently 
and critically says, “A simply haunts the church, and 
is always hanging about to speak to Father X J ISIN EEM 
likely the person who, by lack of intelligent dealing, has 
driven A to Father X , and shifted the burden 
upon him. He takes it up as a part of his sacrifice as a 
priest and very likely as his reward gets the reputation of 
always “having a lot of weak, spineless people hanging 
about him.” Well, there are many stations on the Way 
of the Cross, and not the least painful of these is the 
necessity of bearing unreasoning and _ unintelligent 
criticism. 

Directors, no doubt, ought to avoid the production of 
spiritual invalidism, and yet invalids, spiritual as well as 
others, have a right to aid, and the aim is constructive: 
to build and maintain a strongly developed spiritual life. 
The director is not concerned primarily with weak and 
dependent people who have no wills and want to have their 
minds made up for them. His chief concern and great 
usefulness is in the guidance of souls of great spiritual 
possibilities in the way of sanctity. The process of ad- 














THE ABSOLUTION SEI 


justing the average human life, especially under con- 
temporary conditions, to the requirements of a developed 
spiritual experience is not an easy one. It requires 
thought and skill and infinite patience in dealing with 
detail. It attempts to get the maximum of result from 
the circumstance of a given life. Obviously this cannot 
be done in some offhand and rough and ready fashion, 
nor is mere amateur experiment apt to be more successful. 

Looking at the problem of direction from the side 
of the person directed it is first of all to be considered 
whether direction is needed. Fortunately there are a 
great many well-disposed Christians quite regular in their 
lives, receiving in a normal routine the Sacraments, who 
never fall into mortal sin, and are quite content with 
their confessions and the ordinary commonplace advice 
that is there given them. They are good, solid folk, 
rather of the ‘“‘tough-minded”’ class, the backbone of the 
average congregation. I do not think I am doing them 
any injustice, and do not in the least mean to imply any 
criticism, if I say that they do not aspire to advanced 
spiritual experience. Their needed direction is but oc- 
casional, and they can find the sort of advice they want 
without difficulty. But there are others who are inspired 
by spiritual ambition, who want to develop to the fur- 
thest capacity the spiritual powers of which they have 
become conscious. The love of God burns within them 
and they are forever unsatisfied with the degree of their 
spiritual accomplishment. Their souls restlessly seek 
rest in God. 

It is souls of this class that seek direction, and to 
whom, for many reasons, direction is necessary. It is 
necessary to counteract their unwisdom and inexperience. 
They vaguely know what they want, but they are apt to 


312 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


blunder sadly in the attempt to get it. No physician will 
turn a patient loose in a medicine closet to pick out any- 
thing he thought might help him, still less would he rec- 
ommend all people to buy a treatise on medicine and 
find out for themselves what is their illness, or if they 
are ill at all. And yet that is what people are recom- 
mended to do when they are advised to dispense with 
directors. It is what priests do who preach the Christian 
life and leave people without opportunity of confession 
and direction. It is what they do who simply turn St 
ple loose in a library of pious books. 

Take the case of a person who has been somewhat 
spiritually weakened—let us say a woman, who has been 
either indifferent or routine. Something occurs to turn 
her attention to religion as a vital personal concern. If 
she has thought of religion at all it has rather been as 
a set of rules which she was expected to follow, or as 
a number of negative precepts that she was to avoid break- 
ing. It now appears that religion is something far more 
vital than that, and she begins to grope about to find 
what it is. She has never made her confession. Her 
acquaintance with her rector is limited to having him 
to dinner once a year. What is her probable course? 
She will think of a friend who is “very religious.” The 
chances are that the friend will lend her a book, probably 
the last pious book she has been reading. We can im- 
agine the poor woman going home and resolutely sitting 
down to read, and speedily to get lost in, the pages of 
“Holy Wisdom” or “The Devout Life.” It is all pretty 
unfamiliar ground, and is it any wonder that one thing 
that is advised looks about as impossible as another? 
But she is in dead earnest, so she selects some points 
that she thinks she can undertake, and starts in. The 


THE ABSOLUTION 313 


chances are very good that she will find the whole attempt 
impossible and after a while give it up. She will probably 
lapse back into her former state, with a feeling that she 
has tried religion and found out that there is nothing tm 
it but imagination and nerves. 

Investigation of what she had attempted would show, 
first, that she had been given a book for which she was 
utterly unprepared, which plunged her into a world of 
which she had no experience, and in which she had no 
guide. Second, that with the best intentions she had 
seized upon some things to attempt which were quite 
unfitted for her in her present stage of spiritual develop- 
ment. Very likely she was trying to apply to her case 
some advice that was intended for Religious in an ad- 
vanced stage of sanctity. Nothing but failure could be 
expected to follow from such a course. 

How different the result might have been if the as- 
pirant had been promptly guided to the care of a compe- 
tent priest for her direction. He would have understood 
her spiritual immaturity. He would have felt that two 
things were vital at this point: to arouse her to prayer, 
and to bring her to make her first confession. He would 
have seen to her preparation. He would have heard her 
first confession, and then he would have been in a posi- 
tion to advise her further, and she would have been in a 
position to act intelligently. The suggested actions would 
have been appropriate to her state of life and to her 
spiritual capacity. Raw experiments would have been 
avoided. 

Certainly one of the things that test most searchingly 
the capacity of the director is the opportuneness of his 
advice, his understanding of what is desirable, not in the 
abstract, but for this person at this time. To judge of 


314 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


this requires that the director know the life and circum- 
stance of the penitent; know the penitent well enough 
to discern temperamental tendencies and temptations. He 
must know just what to check and just what to foster 
in this case. There is nothing more hopeless of good 
results than the attempt to direct before one knows; to 
impose general principles without knowledge of the tem- 
perament by which they are to be applied. Direction, 
as distinguished from advice in a special case, can only 
be fruitful where all the terms of the problem one is deal- 
ing with are fully known. Amateur work here may easily 
result in permanent disaster. The priest who lacks sound 
education and some experience would do well to attempt 
very little direction. Of course he can only learn through 
experience, but he needs to acquire the experience before 
he attempts to apply it. 

Those who wish to place themselves under the guidance 
of a skilled director would do well to be perfectly clear 
in their minds what it is that they want. Let them not 
dream of some distant heights of holiness which they are 
presently to scale, but let them fix their minds on what 
is the next step for them. Advance in holiness is com- 
monly quite devoid of any romantic element. The as- 
pirant will find himself brought down to the quite com- 
monplace task of getting rid of an habitual venial sin, 
or attempting to acquire a deeper attention in prayer, or 
making a more careful thanksgiving after Communion. 
The director will not start in by teaching him “contempla- 
tive prayer.” He will be much more likely to insist on 
his saying the Our Father with a better attention. The 
first step will always be, not to adopt something new, but 
to examine whether the old and accustomed have yet been 
done with such competence that it is possible to go be- 


THE ABSOLUTION 315 


yond them. Thoroughness of accomplishment, rather 
than spiritual ambition, is the watchword of the director. 

And this insistence upon perfection in elemental ac- 
complishment will soon test whether the aspirant for 
direction is a romantic soul seeking spiritual novelties, 
or a determined soul seeking a deep life of union with 
God. The latter are the souls that can profit by direc- 
tion, and need it. They can profit because of their love 
of God and zeal for His glory. They need it because 
of their lack of experience in the way they must go. 
“The Way.” That was the earliest designation of the 
Christian religion. Christians themselves were called 
“wayfarers.” Life was conceived as a way leading to 
God, that straight and narrow way of which our Lord 
spoke. Those who find it in this sense of a seeking for 
holiness are not many, but they are the salt of the earth 
and the light of the world. The happiest accomplish- 
ments of the priest’s life are his successes in aiding them. 


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THE SIXTEENTH MEDITATION 
THE COMFORTABLE WORDS 


For the origin of the Comfortable Words we must again 
look to the Lutheran book, Hermann’s Consultation. Five 
sentences are there provided, three of them identical with 
ours, and the minister, instead of reciting all, is to use any 
one of them. 


Let us listen to the words of S. John: 


If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father, 
Jesus Christ, the Righteous, and He is the propitiation 
for our sin. 


Let us try to picture: 


HE taking down of our Lord from the Cross. 

Here would seem to be the end of one more at- 
tempt of God to rouse and raise humanity. It would 
be with sad and burdened hearts that the few who re- 
mained to the end would have received the Body of the 
Lord from the Roman authorities and borne it away to 
Joseph’s tomb. Try to see that little company bearing 
the Body of Jesus to the place where there was a garden, 
and in the garden a new sepulchre. Were there any of 
the Twelve there, recovered from their fright? S. John 
—yes, most likely; though it may be too that he had led 
away the blessed Mother. None of the Twelve is men- 
tioned ; and what one actually sees is a few faithful ones— 
Joseph of Aramathea and Nichodemus with the Body, 
and the women who follow, Mary Magdalene and “the 
other Mary.” They abide to the end; they perhaps feel 
in some dim way that it is not the end. There is a cer- 
tain obstinacy in love which will not believe until its 
last hold is wrenched away. To the men it had become 
clear that Jesus was dead, and the Adventure—wonder- 
ful while it lasted—over. They with whatever disap- 
pointment would turn back and take up the old life. 

319 


320: MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say 
unto him, we also go with thee. But to the women the 
adventure had not been the important thing, but Jesus. 
If the hopes fixed on Him are shattered the Apostles 
can begin life anew; but the women cannot so easily 
gather the fragments of their broken lives. So they will 
not accept the finality of the sealed tomb, but abide, 
sitting over against the Sepulchre. The sun goes down, 
and the shadows gather, and still we see them there— 
watching. 


Consider, first, 


That the tragedy which the women have watched from 
the beginning to this end is not the failure of God but 
the success of God. The clinging impulse of love which 
forbids that the women shall even now give up all hope 
and go back to Jerusalem is a true instinct. Through 
the Crucifixion, the death, the burial, God has been push- 
ing on His plan for the conquest of sin and the deliver- 
ance of humanity from its guilt and power to a successful 
conclusion by the only path through which success was 
possible—the path of sacrifice. And this darkest mo- 
ment is the moment of triumph; the pause of the tomb 
is the moment of silence before the shout of victory 
which shall attend the Resurrection morning. If love 
is to win man—and in the end love will win man—there 
must be a complete demonstration of its limitlessness, 
of its shrinking from no sacrifice for its objects. The 
doubting, feeble, faithless objects of our Lord’s love 
must be convinced in a way that cannot be gainsaid 
that having loved His own He loved them unto the utter- 
most. Such is the darkness of the human heart that 
it will not respond to anything less than the full revela- 


THE COMFORTABLE WORDS 321 


tion of the love of the Father. And it is this self- 
stripping of God of all other tokens of His Divinity that 
throws into splendid isolation the one unassailable proof of 
that Divinity—His measureless love. God so loved the 
world that He gave his only begotten Son to the end 
that all that believe in Him should not perish but have 
everlasting life; and it cannot be that humanity in the end 
will fail to understand that love and respond to it. Our 
hope for the world lies there in our indestructible con- 
viction that such love cannot abide without full fruitage. 
Whatever evidence the world may give of its heartless- 
ness, its disbelief, its indifference to the Divine Sacrifice, 
we remain sitting over against the Sepulchre, waiting, 
with hearts which refuse to be discouraged, the burst 
of glory which shall tell of the success of God and a 
converted world. 


Consider, second, 


That the love of God has not been altogether fruit- 
less. The history of Christianity is the history of a 
partial response. And in particular, our own Christian 
lives are the evidence of our own response. Whatever 
may be the short-coming of those lives, it is of the 
last importance that we should hold fast to their grounds 
of hope and encouragement, the revelation of the limit- 
less love of God manifested in the life of Jesus Christ. 
We fail; we fail over and over again; but God does not 
fail. He abides faithful to the promises made in His 
Son. We are discouraged; over and over again we feel 
the will relax under the stress of the discovery of our 
own weakness and incapacity ; but God is not discouraged ; 
He offers Himself anew as the unfailing resource of 
our failing wills. His word abides in promise, in offer. 


322 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


in cheer. We can hardly open our New Testaments 
without coming on some stimulating word of God which 
seems to have been spoken for our personal heartening ; 
some offer of remedy which applies to our special case. 
It is the wonder of the Bible that no possible human ex- 
perience escapes it or is left unexplained. Have we 
learned to use our Bibles as the textbook of human 
experience? Have we succeeded in finding there both 
ourselves and God? God seeking, sacrificing, loving the 
self which if it too would seek and sacrifice would lose 
itself in that inexhaustible love? God gave Himself 
that you might find Him, and finding Him find peace in 
Him. When the sense of your failure comes do you 
betake yourself to the strength of God? In the hour 
of your weakness do you place yourself in the everlast- 
ing arms, and by the prayer of self-surrender, lose your 
feeling of isolation and find the nearness of God? When 
pain and grief overwhelm, do you remember those hours 
of darkness which for those who had followed our Lord 
and fixed their hopes on him succeeded his Passion, and 
in the light of their experience, take your place in the 
garden, over against the Sepulchre, and wait the coming 
of the Resurrection Morning? 


Let us, then, pray, 


For grace to rely more completely on the promises of 
God. Pray for unyielding hope amid all the discourage- 
ment and distresses of life. 

O God, Who makest all things profitable to those who 
love Thee, grant to our hearts an invincible power of 
love, that the desires which have been conceived by Thy 
inspiration may not be changed by any temptation; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. 


THE COMFORTABLE WORDS 323 


THE COMFORTABLE Worps 


As one has come to understand the Christian doctrine 
of original sin one can easily comprehend the great empha- 
sis laid upon sin and repentance in the revelation of 
God’s mind for man contained in Holy Scripture and 
handed down in the theology of the Christian Church. 
From the point of view of much modern speculation, and 
especially from the point of view of “liberal religion,” 
this emphasis is unintelligible, save as the phenomenon 
of a very imperfect state of religious development. 
Liberalism largely dispenses with the notions of sin and 
salvation. It regards men as imperfectly developed (at 
least our ancestors were) but on the right track and 
progressing rapidly. Whatever they may now be, their 
future state will inevitably be an advance on this and how- 
ever imperfect they may now be we cannot think of 
their conduct as sin in the formally accepted sense of 
that term. 

To be sure the jubilant shouts over the rapid progress 
of the race to a soon to be attained millennium have 
died down. The critics of the conception of indefinite 
human progress are no longer silenced with cries of 
“pessimists.” There is a chastened note, even in the 
most Liberal circles. The conception of progress is be- 
ing subjected to very severe and searching criticism in 
the very house of its friends; but as yet there is little 
sign of any recurrence to the Christian notion of sin as 
being precisely what is the matter with the world. The 
world, as recognized on all sides, is in a most distressing 
state. Our very complex civilization is in danger of 
falling about our ears. The very fact of its complexity 
makes it all the more difficult to sustain. There is much 


324 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


clamor of alarm. There are many plans of salvation of- 
fered. Men, looking for a Saviour, are crying, lo! here, 
and lo! there. The one thing that is conspicuous by its 
absence is the note that was struck in another era of 
crisis—the note that was struck on the banks of the 
Jordan, “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make His paths 
straight”: the note that rang out in Galilee, “The time is 
fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye 
and believe the Gospel.” 

However remote it may seem of execution, this never- 
theless is the only progress in which there is the least 
hope of success. If we are to survive socially we must 
repent and turn to a new social program, which is yet 
the old program of the Jordan and of Galilee and which 
still, after nineteen hundred years, waits its accomplish- 
ment. Men talk of the failure of the Gospel. It has 
not failed! Wherever, and in so far as it has been tried, 
it has succeeded. So far as men acted on it it succeeded 
socially during the Middle Ages. It has succeeded in 
myriads of individual lives all through the centuries. If 
Western society can be saved to-day it can only be saved 
by the adoption of the Gospel of Christ as a social pro- 
gram. Christian men and women have got to learn that 
the Gospel of Christ is not a private religion, a religion 
of select individuals, but a social religion, a Kingdom of 
God capable of regenerating the world. Our pitiful at- 
tempts at being Christians in our individual lives, and 
being anything else in our social lives, have brought us 
to social disaster. There is, it may be, still time for 
repentance. But it is repentance and not social nostrums 
that we need. 

We need it because we are sinners—social sinners— 
because we have been content to think we could be saved 


THE COMFORTABLE WORDS 325 


in isolation: that we could have a private religion which 
would take care of our own souls and that we need not 
care for the souls of our brethren. We need repentance 
because we have been content to live in a world of lust, 
and greed, and oppression, with no effective protest, so 
long as we ourselves were well fed and comfortable. 
We have emasculated the Gospel of Jesus of its fire, 
and energy, and social force, and reduced it to an in- 
nocuous system of good advice. We have sat down com- 
placently in a state of Christendom which violates the 
declared will of God and acquiesced in divisions that 
could be healed, had we really wanted them healed. We 
have talked about “the Churches” and “the branches of 
the Church” and “National Churches” as though these 
phrases represented some normal state of Christendom 
and not a defiance of the will of God. There is nowhere 
that we can turn, religiously or socially, and not see the 
reproachful eyes of God looking into our eyes, and hear 
the voice of the Incarnate saying, “Except ye repent, ye 
shall all likewise perish.” 

The need of repentance, individually and socially, must 
be realized, the awful fact of our sin. It ought to be 
obvious that there can be no spiritual advance without 
that. It is strange how we hate to repent socially. We 
will come one by one and say, “I have sinned against 
Heaven and before Thee’; but the acknowledgment that 
we have been utterly wrong socially as a nation or com- 
munity comes hard. But it is as necessary for nations to 
repent as for individuals, and the need is pressing for the 
penalties are here and now. A nation has no immortality, 
but a nation repents when its members repent and turn 
from their sin that they may be saved. 

Now individually and socially we are often ready to 


326 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


offer a half repentance. We are ready to say we will 
behave differently in the future; we will reform; we 
will turn over a new leaf; but all that isn’t repentance. 
Turning a new leaf does not blot out what was written 
on the old one. Repentance is not forgetting those things 
that are behind, it is setting right those things that are 
wrong. There is fo true repentance where there is no 
restitution. 

It is because, among other things, of this human 
tendency to turn our backs upon the disaster we have 
made, the ruin we have caused, and to attempt to make 
some sort of a new state independent of the past, that 
the Christian religion so stresses the reconstructive ele- 
ment in repentance. We have no right simply to turn 
our backs and walk away from the wrong from which we 
are responsible. If we have wronged our brother we 
must set right the wrong; and we must do our best to 
set right the wrongs of the social order in which we are 
implicated. We cannot guiltlessly take up the Cain cry, 
“Am I my brother’s keeper?’ We cannot escape our 
responsibility as members of the social order. Repent- 
ance and restoration are the first steps to a new order. 
Understanding of the ills of the present, opening our 
eyes wide to the needs of our brethren, these are our 
obligations to-day. We are allied with some social group; 
we see through the eyes of that group: we have no right 
to take what we thus see as the whole truth. We have 
no right to conclude that the assumptions of the group 
are true; we must examine all in the light of the Gospel. 

When we have faced facts; when we have made our 
self-examination; when we have acknowledgel ourselves 
sinners; then there is hope. Then have we the right to 
turn hopefully to the promises of God. But let me 


_ 


THE COMFORTABLE WORDS 327 


emphasize, if it so be, overmuch: we have no right to 
the comfort of those promises until we have fulfilled the 
condition of repentance. If society turns eagerly to the 
principles of the Gospel, then may it hope. If the in- 
dividual sinner turns from his sin, then may he hope. 
Hope comes when we have set our feet firmly in the way 
of repentance. 

By one side of it, that way is the Way of the Cross. 
It is a way of difficulty and pain, and would we have it 
otherwise? If we have attained to a true repentance: 
if we have seen sin in the light of the purity of God: if 
our own lives have stood out in our self-examinations 
in naked contrast with the ideals we have claimed that 
we are following; then there can be no doubt of the 
pain, and no shrinking from the uttermost of it. We 
face the truth that we have been misusing life, that we 
have turned our powers, God-given though they were, 
to a purely selfish use. We have tried to get out of 
life what God has not put into it. We now understand 
that what we have been doing was struggling against the 
will of God, trying to thwart that will, to mis-shape 
life to our own interest, and the consequence of all that 
now comes back to us. We see as the consequence of 
sin—of our sin, for we cannot hide in a crowd—a Man 
going forth bearing a Cross to the place of His torture. 
That Cross, we understand, that He is there bearing, is 
our Cross. It would not be there, and He would not be 
about to be nailed to it, save for our sins. He has no 
sin. There is no reason why He should carry the Cross, 
save that He chose to do so for our salvation. How 
then shall we not run to His aid? How then shall we 
shrink from any pain which can associate us with Him? 
We, too, as we see, are signed with the cross, for the Way 


328 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


of the Cross is to us the way of salvation. We are 
eager to bear it because we know that Christ did not 
bear the Cross in order that we might not bear it, but 
He bore it in order that we might know how to bear 
it. Its pain must be ours before we can share in its 
triumph. 


Even so, O Cross! thine is the victory. 
Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields; 
Brightness may emanate in Heaven from thee, 
Here thy dread symbol only shadow yields. 


Of reaped joys thou art the heavy sheaf 
Which must be lifted, though the reaper groan; 
Yea, we may cry till Heaven’s great ear be deaf, 
But we must bear thee, and must bear alone. 


Vain were a Simon; of the Antipodes 
Our night not borrows the superfluous day. 
Yet woe to him that from his burden flees, 
Crushed in the fall of what he cast away. 


It is a widely prevalent feeling, holding many people 
back from any attempt at an advance in Christian ex- 
perience, that the way of discipline and penitence neces- 
sarily takes from life all comfort and joy. They picture 
the earnest Christian as cut off from all that makes 
life tolerable and going in a state of depression all his life 
long. That easily made blunder is of course due to 
concentration of thought upon what a Christian gives 
up, and failure to estimate what he gains. If a Christian 
experience brings nothing into life, then there is much 
force in the criticism made upon it; but the contrary is 
the case. The acquisitions of the Christian are far be- 
yond his losses. 


THE COMFORTABLE WORDS 329 


In close relation with the call of God to repentance 
there are certain promises which are made to those who 
heed this call of God. The Christian not only takes these 
promises seriously, but speedily finds them to be the basis 
of a deepening experience. Let us look at that group of 
promises which we have come to know as “the Comforf> 
able Words.” For our purposes we will disregard the 
order in which they are set out in the Communion Office. 

There is the fundamental statement that Christ Jesus 
is “the propitiation for our sins.” We need not here 
insist upon the nature of sin and the obstacle that it is to 
our approach to God. What we are concerned with now 
is that life is tremendously enriched and enlightened by 
this announcement. If Columbus, when he sailed upon 
his quest, could have been assured of its success, and have 
known that he was opening to the Old World all the 
treasures of the New, how wonderfully his task would 
have been lightened, and how many anxious days he 
would have been saved. We, when we enter upon the 
way of penitence, know what the end is. The forgive- 
ness of sins is not problematical. We are not in doubt 
until we have reached the end whether sin can be for- 
given. One can imagine a person who does not believe in 
our Lord nevertheless being overwhelmed by a sense 
of sinfulness. A man has perhaps committed some great 
sin, and is depressed by the sense of it, and wonders 
whether there be any escape. He believes in “natural 
religion” and he looks about him in the natural world for 
comfort. He finds one inevitable law written there, the 
law of cause and effect, which admits of neither re- 
pentance nor reparation. “Whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he reap.” He may cry as he will in his agony 
of remorse, “but there is no voice, or any to answer” 


330 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


in the only world that he knows. He may faintly hope 
and go softly all his days in his sorrow, but there is noth- 
ing for him to lay hold upon. 

How different it is with the Christian! He becomes 
conscious of sin with a much deeper consciousness of it 
than any other can have because he alone understands the 
true nature of sin, that it is a wound to the love of God. 
But it is not an irreparable wound. God in His infinite 
mercy has opened a fountain for sin and uncleanliness, 
where all the guilt of sin may be washed away. The 
blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. He is the 
propitiation, an offering for sin, which opens an approach 
for our souls to God, the very God Whom we have 
wounded by our sins. That is the wonder of it! That 
the very God Whom we have wounded by sin Offers 
Himself as the means of sin’s forgiveness. 

Looked at from this angle, then, the way of penitence 
is the way of approach. Whatever its roughness, it is 
still a road leading the wanderer home; and more than 
that, it is not altogether true to say that we find God at 
the end of the road. Really we find Him at the begin- 
ning. It is He Himself who inspires our repentance. 
It is He Himself who takes our hand and leads us on 
the Way. That first confession that we made with such 
difficulty—that was the deep expression of our dawning 
sense of what sin is and what God is; that was the 
outcome of our first clear vision of self in all our naked- 
ness. It was the gateway to the Way of the Cross. 
Ever since we have been walking on that road, but at 
the very gate as we entered, our Lord met us and has 
been walking the Way with us ever since. His was the 
hand that reached out to support us when we stumbled. 
His was the strength that sustained us when we were 


THE COMFORTABLE WORDS 331 


faint. When we were very weary and exhausted He 
Himself was the tonic that revived us. It was His Body 
and Blood that poured strength into our fainting souls. 
It is this that carries us on. Let the road be what it may 
we can travel it, and travel it with joy, if we are con- 
scious of the friend at the side: if we can close our eyes 
and see the Face. 


This is your road—a painful road and drear. 
I made the stones that never give you rest. 

I set your friend in pleasant ways and clear, 
And he shall come, like you, unto My breast. 
But you, my child, must travel here. 


This is your task. It has no joy nor grace, 
But ’tis not meant for any other hand. 

And in My universe hath measured place, 
Take it,—I do not bid you understand. 

I bid you close your eyes and see My face. 


The faith that can go on then in the strength of vision; 
the faith that confides in the propitiation that has been 
made, is the faith that lightens all the way before our 
feet. Our soul has been relieved of the burden of guilt. 
What does it matter that for a while we are asked to pay 
the penalty, to make the partial restoration which is the 
temporal penalty of sin? Are we not rather glad to share 
thus in the work, and to take our part in the process of 
sanctification? It stimulates us thus to be called to part- 
nership with God; to feel that we are working out our 
own salvation all the time that He worketh in us both to 
will and to do. Self-righteousness is the outcome of 
separating our work from the work of God. So long as 
we feel that we are working with God, and by virtue of 


332 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the strength that He bestows upon us, the result is not 
self-righteousness, but humility. 

Through the propitiation made by Jesus Christ for our 
sins we are assured, if we fail Him not, of Heaven. 
Again, not some final salvation, but now are we saved. 
We are placed by the grace of God in a state of salvation, 
or, as it is otherwise called, in a state of grace. “Jesus 
Christ came into the world to save sinners.” He saves 
sinners by forgiving their sins when they repent, and by 
taking them into union with Himself, that from being 
sinners they may become saints. The negative state of 
being forgiven is not enough. We need the positive 
state of growth in grace. The sign of our spiritual 
vitality is our growth. Stagnation is to relapse into 
spiritual death. Someone has said that there are many 
Christians who are content with a very modest patrimony 
so far as concerns spiritual things, and that is such a 
pity, for we have a very rich Father Who wants to 
bestow the gifts of the spirit abundantly. “It grieves 
His Divine Spirit,” says Blosius, “to see us content with 
the lowest things, when He is ready to bestow on us the 
highest. For He desires to give Himself to us in the 
most excellent way.” 

After the storms of repentance it is so sweet to rest 
in the promises of God. There are, no doubt, still the 
long, swelling waves which are the effects of the storm 
that has passed. There are, too, renewed bursts of storm- 
wind, reminding us that Nature never passes into a state 
of perpetual rest. There are gusts of passion, of passion 
we had hoped was dead. There are uprisings of the 
senses; revolts of the carnal nature; storms of spiritual 
revolt, of pride and of anger; but when we are safe in 
the everlasting arms all these are but reminders of our 


THE COMFORTABLE WORDS 333 


frailty; warnings to keep watch and guard rather than 
actual disaster. As the storm recedes we hear it mutter- 
ing in the distance; but all about us the sun shines. It 
seems the more splendid because of the storm that has 
passed. So we emerge from temptation with an added 
sense of the grace and goodness of God and of His care 
FOL, us; 

All this brings a deep happiness into the way we are 
following. We understand the experience of the first 
Christians as we study their writings, and perceive how 
greatly their joy was a joy of escape. They are con- 
scious of the time of the old evil life, lying in the back- 
ground, from which they have come out. Their life is 
not now an easy life, but there is laughter and lighthearted- 
ness in them. They go now to meet their trial with a 
sense of what they have won. We are apt to undervalue 
what has come to us without effort, but what has cost 
us, we deeply value. And we value our religion, our 
spiritual experience, I think, in proportion to the effort 
we have put into the acquisition of it. There are so many 
souls whom we think fortunate because they have never 
been tried as we, and we are tempted to envy their se- 
renity; but it is never wise to trust an untried strength, 
and the trials we have had to meet have tested us, and 
tried us even as the silver is tried. And we have emerged 
from the trial immensely strengthened, with a strength 
that we can trust. What God asks us to endure is the 
measure of His trust in us. All along the way that the 
Christian follows in imitation of his Divine Master there 
are means of refreshment. We drink of the brook in the 
way. “Come unto Me,” our Lord invites, “all ye that 
travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you.” 
He gives us that refreshing drink of which He speaks so 


334 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


often and so enticingly. We catch a glimpse of Him on 
that “great day of the feast,” standing and crying, “If 
any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.” We 
hear His words to the woman of Samaria, “If thou 
knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to 
thee, give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of Him 
and He would given thee living water.” Our trouble is 
that we so often seek the water of which whosoever 
drinketh shall thirst again. We look, weary and heavy- 
laden as we are, to the material gifts of this life for 
comfort and support. We seek distractions. We seek 
for a moment to forget the weariness and the fret. 

There is an infinite tragedy in the life of to-day with its 
wide assumption that Christianity has failed. There is 
no triumph of the devil so complete as that which per- 
suades men that Christianity is played out; that there is 
no help to be found in the religion of the Cross. Over 
the door of a city church our Lord hangs crucified. All 
day and all night the stream of traffic passes by. Very 
rarely is there any eye raised to the figure which hangs 
above the door, embodying the promises of God for salva- 
tion of men. All day and all night He continually cries, 
“Ts it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?’ Obviously 
it is nothing, less than nothing. And yet the pity of it! 
How many weary and dragging lives pass there in the 
shadow of the Cross! How many lives that are con- 
scious of failure and of sin! What multitudes might 
find help and comfort. But no, they have been persuaded 
that Christianity is a failure. They think it has been 
proved that there is no help there. So they go their way, 
empty souls, vaguely longing for help and not knowing 
where to find it. 

More or less are we all like that in our partial accept- 


THE COMFORTABLE WORDS 335 


ance of Jesus. We hold back a part of our lives. One 
studies the Church member, the fairly regular communi- 
cant ; one studies one’s own history, and one finds the same 
withholding, the same partial surrender of self to the 
Saviour. “Come unto Me!” He cries, and we think we 
come. We come with our self-offering, but we “hold 
back part of the price.” We foolishly imagine that we 
can bargain with Him who gave all for us. We try to 
effect some sort of a compromise. Perhaps we have a 
foolish dream that Christ will bear for us the weariness 
of the burden, and give to us the fulness and joy of life. 
We like to share our worry and our pain, but we will 
keep our joys to ourselves. 

Not thus can we deal with life. There is no compro- 
mise with the Christ. If we have not surrendered all, 
we have surrendered nothing. What Jesus offers to re- 
deem and sanctify is not some fragment of life but our- 
selves wholly. What He offers to share with us is our 
whole life-experience. He will receive us on no other 
terms than those of complete surrender. How can it be 
otherwise? How can his great gift of rest come to a 
“divided life’? Rest means that all that divides life is 
unified, all that disturbs life is stilled. Rest means that 
we have surrendered ourselves completely to the sacrific- 
ing love of Jesus. It means that we have succeeded in 
abandoning our wills to Him. The weariness and the 
labor that we bring to Him are the weariness and labor 
of attempting to manage life results apart from Him and 
without reference to Him. It means that we have got 
to the end of our resources and are convinced of our 
own incompetence to deal with our problems. 

So Jesus waits for us with the infinite patience of God. 
He watches from His Cross the crowds stream by. He 


B20 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


sees the boy and girl so very sure of themselves, so certain 
of their ability to manage life without help, so clear that 
they “know their way about’: watches them with eyes 
that pity and understand. He sees the man who is 
utterly immersed in material interests, who has no time to 
think of any other world. He sees that for all of them 
the years of success and the years of failure lead to the 
same end,—emptiness of soul. Will they in time find 
the truth of life and come to God through the Door, and 
kneel in the confessional and cast the weary load upon 
Him? 

And the world that they make up, this vast tragedy of 
egotism and greed, which is still sometimes called “Chris- 
tian civilization,’ will that sometime discover that what 
it was meant to be was the Kingdom of God? Will that 
repent and come back, or is it too late? Has the bell 
tolled and sunk into silence; has the sentence, the irrevo- 
cable sentence of God, been passed? Who can say? All 
that we can say is that 


Still above them all one Figure stands 
With outstretched hands. 


We go on in the gathering dark, clinging to the com- 
fort of this word, “God so loved the world, that He gave 
His only begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in 
Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Yes, 
that is what we cling to, that is the anchor that holds our 
lives firm on the journey; and we find, do we not? 
that this is not a promise that beckons from the distance, 
a distance which seems always to recede as we approach 
to it; it is not a drug to keep us quiet amid the disasters 
of life. No, Jesus Christ came to confer on us the price- 
less gift of eternal life now, that we might now enjoy it, 


THE COMFORTABLE WORDS 337 


and in enjoying it have a foretaste of the life of Heaven. 
Everlasting life is not immortality. It is the life of the 
Christian now, his life of union with the Redeemer. 
“Now are we Sons of God,” the Apostle triumphantly 
cries. Now, here, we enter on the inheritance. There 
is no more fatal mistake that we can make than the mis- 
take of assuming that all that Christ promises has to do 
with the far and doubtful future. That the promises of 
the Gospel are fulfilled in a future life. That, no doubt, 
would make the Christian life meaningless for all except 
a few dreamers. But no, the gift, whatever may be its 
future possibilities, whatever potentialities may be hidden 
within it, is a present gift, the gift of Himself that Christ 
Jesus makes to the faithful. Everlasting life is that life 
hid with Christ in God, which is the significant thing in 
the experience of the Christian now. It is that super- 
natural vitality which enables him to face with cheerful- 
ness and joy all the demands that His Redeemer makes 
upon Him. It is this that so changes his outlook, that 
what to others seems a very grey existence, without 
pleasure and without excitement, is to him full of light 
and joy. “How much you have given up; how much you 
miss,’ the world pityingly says. A small boy beating a 
drum and blowing a horn no doubt feels a thrill of ecstasy 
and pities his elders because they are too old “to have any 
fun in life.’ There are things that we leave behind and 
forget in the joy of pressing forward to another sphere 
of accomplishment. The pity of the world is quite 
wasted upon the Christian. 

For one by one the Christian brings the promises of 
God to the test of experience. He finds in Him pro- 
pitiation and salvation. He experiences His rest, and 
enters upon everlasting life. What a wonderful and varied 


338 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


life it is, this Christian life! We look back, it may be, 
to a distant day when we stood hesitating upon the thresh- 
old, wondering if we had the strength to undertake it, 
our eyes drawn lingeringly back to what we were giving 
up. And then we made the plunge of a full and com- 
plete acceptance. We entered upon the experience of 
the sacramental life, and we found that that experience, 
of which we had but a vague glimpse, opened out in 
endless richness and variety. The spiritual life—how 
without content that phrase was, when we made our 
Act of Faith and pushed out into the deep, turning our 
eyes from the shore to the tossing vast of the unknown 
before us. The spiritual life—what splendor of ideal 
and of accomplishment has been found in our pursuit of 
it along the Narrow Way. And still to-day, after all the 
years of experience, it spreads before us, inexhaustible. 
We have come to understand something of its marvels, 
and we have learned, too, to understand that it is inex- 
haustible. All the ages of eternity will find us rejoicing 
in the fulness of God. 


ss 


THE SEVENTEENTH MEDITATION 
tHE SURSUM] CORDA 


With the Sursum Corda, “Lift up your hearts,’ we come 
to another, and the most vital, part of the Mass, the Canon. 
At present, in all missals, Anglican or Roman, it is custom- 
ary to call the beginning of the actual prayer of Consecra- 
tion the beginning of the Canon. But it really begins with 
the Sursum Corda,—or rather with the greeting “The Lord 
be with you,” which precedes the “Lift up your hearts.” 
This section of dialogue, ending with the Sanctus, has come 
down from the most primitive days and is common to all 
liturgies. Following our Lord’s action at the Last Supper, 
when He took bread and wine and gave thanks, the Canon 
of the Mass, in all rites, is really a long prayer, or series 
of prayers of Thanksgiving; and here, at the very beginning, 
this note of thanksgiving comes out. “Lift up your hearts.” 
“Let us give thanks. ...” “It-is very meet, rightvand ous 
bounden duty that we should... give thanks.’ Hence 
comes one of the names for the Mass, the Holy Eucharist or 
Thanksgiving. The importance of this beginning of the 
Canon is emphasized by the solemn and beautiful music to 
which the words are sung. The opening greeting, “The 
Lord be with you,” and its response were retained in the 
First Prayer Book but were dropped in 1552. It is now 
proposed to restore them, bringing this part of our rite back 
to its ancient form. 


SS es Oe 


Let us listen to the words of Elizabeth and Mary: 


And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, “Blessed 
art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy 
womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my 
Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice 
of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped 
in my womb for joy. And blessed is she that believed: 
for there shall be a performance of those things which 
were told her from the Lord.” “And Mary said, My 
soul doth magnify the Lord.” 


Let us picture: 


HE Visitation. In the meeting of these two women 
© we read the experience of the deepest of all human 
joys—the joy of motherhood. God has intervened in 
their lives to bring to them this supreme happiness. To 
Elizabeth after she had long given up the hope of ma- 
ternity He has given a son; and upon that son about 
to be born He has bestowed a vocation to be the fulfiller 
of prophecy and the herald of the Messiah. “He shall 
go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to 
turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the 
disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready 
a people prepared for the Lord.” To Mary, still more 
wonderfully, has a Son been given, whose “‘name shall 
be called Jesus, God with us.’ So we see them on this 
day rejoicing together with a pure and holy joy; sharing 
the secrets of their hopes and fears, drawn to communi- 

341 


342 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


cate them to each other by the fact of their choice by God | 
to be the medium of his action on the world. In Eliza- 
beth there is the joy of election; but in Mary, in addition 
to the joy of election there is the deep happiness and 
peace which spring from a great act of self-surrender. 
Her response to the heavenly Messenger, “Behold the 
handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy 
word,” had been the response of a faith complete enough 
to fit her to be the instrument of God’s purpose—had 
been the response of a selfless submission to the will of 
God. God’s response to such abandonment of self to his 
will is that the soul shall be filled with the sense of his 
presence. And Elizabeth said: ‘Whence is this that 
the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as 
soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, 
the babe leaped in my womb for joy.” And Mary said: 
“My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath 
rejoiced in God my Saviour.” 


Consider, first, 


That the joy of these holy women is the joy of finding 
themselves the objects of God’s choice. The children 
whom they are to bear are, what the name soon to be 
given to one of them signifies, the gifts of God. Their 
mothers will receive them as such, with reverent joy, 
and rear them in the light of their high vocation. They 
do not at all know what the vocation of God implies 
for their sons; they will be content with the knowledge 
that they know God’s will, and will go on faithfully in 
obedience to it, awaiting its unfolding in the future. 
Elizabeth, no doubt, went to her grave with joy, all un- 
knowing of the meaning of the prophetic message of 
the angel. Dreams, no doubt, she wove about the mys- 


THE SURSUM CORDA 343 


terious words so long as her life lasted—dreams which 
would have been fashioned and colored by the messainic 
hope which was the inheritance of her people; dreams, 
it may be, of a great career and noble success. What- 
ever the dreams contained we may be certain that they 
did not contain the announcement of the Lamb of God, 
the defiance of the wicked king, the death in a dungeon. 
She died with her hope still radiant and her dream un- 
broken. With Mary it was otherwise. She was to watch 
the perfect childhood pass into the splendid maturity; and . 
then to see the mystery deepen, the clouds gather, the 
Cross rise. She was to feel the sword pierce her soul. 
But through it all the faith which had accepted the voca~- 
tion to the divine motherhood was able also to accept the 
vocation of the Mater Dolorosa, and was rewarded by the 
final revelation that the Child she had borne in her womb 
and nourished at her breast, was “declared the Son of 
God with power by the resurrection from the dead.” 
She passed from the mystery of her motherhood through 
the mystery of her suffering to the unfolding of God’s 
dealings with her in that she had given of her substance 
to clothe the Person of God the Son with the robe of 
humanity. And in each stage of her deepening expe- 
rience there was contained the revelation of a new and 
deeper joy. 


Consider, second, 


That joy is a spiritual quality, the gift of God the 
Holy Ghost; and that joy for us too deepens with the 
deepening of our experience of God. Our first joys in 
religion were most likely without much depth or perma- 
nence. They were reactions from our first contacts with 
spiritual reality, and were, it may be, soon obliterated by 


344 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the friction of other elements in our diversified expe- 
rience. God revealed Himself as the sun reveals itself 
through the clouds, in flashes of light. There was a ray 
of His Presence which lighted our prayers for a moment 
and then left us to struggle with a sense of spiritual 
weakness and ineffectualness. There were moments of 
inner warmth when our souls glowed in the consciousness 
of the divine nearness, but that too passed away and left 
us once more cold. But if we persisted in the faith that 
life has a definite meaning and that God is guiding us 
to a fuller knowledge of Himself, if our eye was watchful 
and our heart attentive, we found that the deeper, harder, 
sadder experiences of life as they enfolded us and tried 
us, had in the heart of them a revelation of a divine mean- 
ing that was so deep that it could only be made known to 
deeps in us. Then we stretched out our souls and felt the 
assuring clasp of a hand in the darkness and were able 
to walk down into the very Valley of the Death-shade 
undismayed. As when hand closes hard with hand and 
love touches love a thrill passes from one to the other 
so a thrill of joy came to us from the touch of God. The 
joy of our divine birth passed into the joy of our Cross- 
bearing and we emerged at length from the darkness of 
Calvary to see the glorious dawn of the Resurrection 
breaking on the morning of the Third Day. That is 
the normal Christian experience; and let it console us, 
if we have not yet attained its fulness, that to those who 
are faithful the promise is that at even-tide there shall 
be light. And the walk through the Valley, too, is not 
without its own peculiar joy, the joy which comes from 
willing acceptance of the will of God. ‘Behold the hand- 
maid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” 


THE SURSUM CORDA 345 


Let us, then, pray, 


For the joy which comes from the gift of ourselves to 
God. Let us pray to learn to lift our hearts to God that 
he may filll them with joy and peace in believing. 

Grant, O Lord, unto those who fear Thy Name, a 
happiness that shall endure forever, that by their deeds 
and by their life, they may lay up in store for themselves 
in heaven a harvest of good fruits; through Jesus Christ, 
our Lord. 


SURSUM CORDA 


Lift up your hearts! The note of expectancy, of 
hope, of joy, is struck. After our period of penitence, 
after the humility of our confession, after our absolution, 
we take courage. We listen to the promises of God. 
We grasp them with the hands of faith. We feel the 
confidence of reinvigorated union. We now turn from 
ourselves, our pitiful failure, our weakness, and look 
out of ourselves to the grace of God. We lift our eyes 
to Him Who is drawing near. We are filled with the 
expectancy of the approach. 

We remember, it may be, the movement in a symphony, 
when a joyous burst of trumpets signals the coming tri- 
umph of a hero. Or, going back to our childhood mem- 
ories, we recall a moment of intense expectancy when 
distant music told of the approach of a procession. How 
tense the moment was! How our eyes were fixed on 
the distant road, where the procession would soon become 
visible! Better than all, some of us can remember our 
first Solemn Mass, when, after the murmurs of the peni- 
tent congregation and the solemn words of the promises, 


246 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


the clear tones of the celebrant rang out in the notes of 
the Sursum Corda. What a moment that is in the Mass, 
when invitation of joy and thankfulness passes through 
the promises of the preface to the burst of adoration of 
the Sanctus. Lift up your hearts indeed! The whole of 
one’s being is swept into the magnificence of the act in 
which one is merged. 

It creates in one momentarily an attitude of mind and 
soul which we should at least attempt to stabilize and make 
permanent, the attitude of expectancy in our religion. 
There are so many dull lives which we feel are dull, not 
by any force of external circumstances sterilizing them, 
but dull because of the lack of any vision, because they 
fail to see the possibilities of their life. What, we seem 
to see, is making them so ineffective, so the victims of 
commonplace routine, is the fact that they are blind to 
the possibilities of their own life. They want interest 
brought to them from without. They want amusement 
purveyed to them. They are spoiled by their lack of 
self-reliance. You shall see two small boys, one of whom 
has been brought up under the eye of a watchful mother 
or nurse. He is followed about wherever he goes, and 
constantly told what to do, and given things to play with, 
and as a result has constantly to be amused and cared 
for. He continues to be a helpless and dependent being 
until he is well grown. Another boy, almost from birth, 
is thrown on his own resources. He has no one to help 
him play; no one whose business it is to amuse him; 
no one to provide him with toys of all sorts. He must 
find ways of amusing himself, and he has no difficulty in 
so doing. He leads a happy, joyous, self-reliant life. 
So there are people whose religious life is dull and un- 
inspired, who find in their religion at most an obligatory 


THE SURSUM CORDA 347 


routine, the fulfilment of which gives them no more than 
a sense of duty done. They need to get free from the 
sense of religion as imposed formality and find in it a 
field of great adventure. After all we find what we look 
for, and we get what we seek. 

An attitude thus of expectancy, a reliance on the grace 
of God, is an elemental need. We must understand our 
relation to God—a relation which was established at our 
Baptism—as the ground of boundless expectancy, the 
opening of the door to the unsearchable riches. They 
are not riches which are going to be brought to us without 
effort on our part. Our Father is very rich, but we are 
not the idle children of a rich father who provides for us 
unasked, and we have no spiritual nursemaids to pamper 
us and relieve us from all effort and bring us up spiritual 
weaklings. Rather we have all things at our disposal 
on condition that we have insight enough to understand 
their meanings and possibilities, and energy enough to 
acquire them. We are entitled to rely utterly on the 
riches of God as our spiritual patrimony, to regard the 
results as His children and heirs and as joint heirs with 
Christ. But that anything shall come from this relation, 
it is necessary that we develop the life of the Child of 
God. That using these years of our probation we start 
with the talents committed to us, that God in the end 
may receive of us, not only His own, but His own with 
usury. Religion is not an operation to which we sub- 
mit; but a cooperation in which we participate. 

What then are we entitled to expect? It is easy to 
answer, “the grace of God,’ but that is too vague to help 
us much just here. Let us try to particularize one or 
two facts for the sake of definiteness. And I shall put 
this first: that we are entitled to free access to God. 


348 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


That, no doubt, seems but a commonplace statement, but 
it is the commonplace in religion which most needs empha- 
sis at present. One of the great obstacles to teaching 
religion is the seemingly incurable romanticism of the 
average human being, who finds interest only in the new 
and untried. R 

However, if the last statement be true, it must also 
be true that men are overlooking the romantic possibili- 
ties of the Catholic faith. For what is newer in the ex- 
perience of the average American, or more untried? 
One sees the crowds rushing to the latest sensation in the 
way of heresy or new religion with a feeling that if they 
are really in search of thrills they could find keener ones 
in places of easier access. There is a curious conviction, 
it would seem of wide prevalence, that because a given 
thing has been a long time in existence we must be familiar 
with it. The Catholic faith has been:in the world nearly 
two thousand years, and therefore lacks novelty. But 
is there anything that is less known to far the greater part 
of the American people? Does the man who passes by 
the suggestion of Catholicity really have the remotest 
conception of what it is all about? His sense of fam- 
iliarity with the Catholic religion will not stand the 
simplest test; his ignorance of the meaning of the com- 
monest terms is complete. 

Therefore we would suggest that it is not necessary 
to go far afield to find novelty; and we would suggest 
this, not to the bored person who is seeking novelty, or 
to the Protestant who condemns Catholicity out of hand 
(neither of whom is likely to read these pages), but to 
the Churchman who is not finding much of interest in 
his religion, and who in consequence is not making any 
progress in it: who has lasped, not away from the 


THE SURSUM CORDA 349 


Church into irreligion, but into a more or less contented 
acquiescence in what he regards as a fact, that religion 
is a badge of respectability, or an insurance against the 
future, and not the present possession of a great truth. 

And to go back to the point from which we seem to 
have wandered, he will find this illumination of the worth 
of religion in the discovery of God as a living Person - 
whom he may always approach, and to whom he may 
hopefully submit the guidance of his life. This seems to 
me the starting-point of all religion; the essence of all 
faith—the easy access to God as to one who infinitely 
cares. How much He cares we have just heard in 
the Comfortable Words; how infinitely He cares we are 
presently to try to understand in the rehearsal of the very 
Sacrifice itself. But we only understand that He cares 
when we have made the personal discovery of the fact in 
the intimacy of our relation to Him. A single personal 
problem of life, taken to God as our Father, and dealt 
with freely and unreservedly there, will do more to 
illumine our relation with Him and put it on a right 
and intelligible footing than any amount of theory. You 
are the child of God. You have every right to expect 
your Father’s interest and aid. When you have acted 
upon this truth it becomes undeniable to you. 

One other point. You, as the child of God, are en- 
titled to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. You may 
rightly expect to be guided by Him in the conduct of 
your life. This does not mean that you are to look for 
supernatural revelations as to your conduct. It does 
mean that if you humbly submit your life to God’s will 
and try your best to guard against self-will and interested 
motives, you are always to expect that you will be led to 
make such decisions as are in accord with God’s mind, 


350 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


We have an unfortunate way of making our decisions first 
in the light of self-interest, and then praying that God 
will bless what we have decided to do. I do not believe 
that that is a very hopeful way of securing the Divine 
blessing on our conduct. God must be consulted first, 
must be our confidant and adviser, if we are to expect 
His cooperation in the execution of the things we have 
decided to do. We cannot first run into debt and then 
expect God to endorse our notes. 

So much in illustration of what I mean by an attitude 
of expectancy. I think it would be the general testimony 
of Christians that such an attitude is justified in expe- 
rience. Those who have learned “to wait on the Lord,” 
whose lives are constantly and consciously referred to 
Him, do find that their lives are supported and guided 
by Him. Day by day they experience His loving care 
and feel that the decisions they are called upon to make 
can be made in confidence that they are according to 
His will. In other words, they have a growing sense 
of the supernatural background of life. A growing ex- 
perience of this is a necessary consequence of advance in 
the spiritual life. That life depends constantly on God, 
and it advances in growth in the knowledge and love of 
God. We cannot advance far without becoming conscious 
of God’s action upon us and in us, not in the way of 
what we call “mystical phenomena” but in our increased 
absorption in prayer and meditation, and in the Bpgestel 
serenity of the presence of God. 

Thus we learn to rely on God. We learn to turn to 
fHim instinctively in all the circumstances of our lives. 
He is the one to be consulted first. It is the voice on 
which we rely for guidance. So life gains in steadiness 
and in confidence. At first in the life of the Spirit we 


THE SURSUM CORDA 351 


walk like a child, hesitatingly and fearfully. But our 
steps gain in certainty and precision as we go on. In 
physical life it is self-confidence we gain. We become 
“sure of ourselves” as we say. The government of our 
physical actions is pushed down into the unconscious and 
takes care of itself. In the spiritual life what we learn is 
not self-reliance, but reliance on God, to live a life of 
dependence as His children. Still there is a certain an- 
alogy, at least likeness, in the two spheres of action. As 
in the habitual acts of life, breathing, walking and so on, 
we are governed from the unconscious, so in the spirit- 
ual sphere we are guided from the supernatural. The 
supernatural is the unconscious of the spirit, and 
spiritual education means being so trained that we are 
guided in things spiritual from the supernatural by an 
almost automatic reaction. 

Our decisions as to the allowability, or advisability 
of conduct have not to be weighed and pondered. We 
decide with the same ease and certainty as that with which 
we move our hands and feet. Uncertainty and perplexity 
as to Christian conduct is in fact a mark of immaturity, 
of imperfect mastery of our material. We are uncertain 
and hesitant because we have not learned to “walk in 
the spirit.’ No doubt we never do arrive at ideal self- 
mastery. New questions, and new phases of old ques- 
tions, constantly present themselves. There are times 
of distress and perplexity when it seems as though the 
ground were giving way under our feet. What we have 
been accustomed to rely on fails us. There is a struggle 
to apply the old principles, which seem no longer to cover 
the ground. Faith itself, it may be, reels and falters. 
Then is the time to listen to the voice, “Lift up your 
hearts,” and throw ourselves once more on the source 


352 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


of all help and strength as we answer, “We lift them up 
unto the Lord.” 

So we are brought back to calmness, to sanity. So 
we are able to front the new situation. We have been in 
trouble and perplexity before and God has not failed 
us. God never does fail us. On the contrary He pours 
new strength into our lives. “They that wait on the 
Lord shall renew their strength; for they shall mount 
up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary, 
they shall walk, and not faint.” 

We have found that to be true every time we have 
tested it. We know, when we consider our lives, that we 
have only failed when we have not trusted, when we have 
used our own strength and our own judgment independ- 
antly of the mind of God. It is well for us, if we ponder 
and fix in the mind the lesson of our failures, that ulti- 
mately they are failures to rely on the supernatural, on 
God. They are withdrawals of life from the Divine 
jurisdiction, with what consequences of disaster our mem- 
ories will easily tell us. 

One great consequence of this growth in spiritual ex- 
perience, this increasing skill in using the supernatural 
background, is a growing hopefulness in the face of what 
life brings to us. One of the temptations of life as we 
pass away from the unreasoning hopefulness of youth is 
the temptation to judge the present and future pes- 
simistically. The youthful élan which saw all things in 
terms of immediate conquests has been disappointed; 
the youthful optimism has revealed itself as imagination 
and not thought. We are disillusioned as to life and 
easily pass into a pessimistic state, or that curious state 
of cynicism so characteristic of a certain stage of im- 


THE SURSUM CORDA 353 


mature development. But both the youthful optimism 
and the succeeding cynicism are impulses rather than 
reasoned states of mind. When we arrive at a state 
of spiritual sanity we understand that both our optimism 
and our pessimism are unjustified. In neither state are 
we seeing life clearly and whole. When we have had 
time to take in the whole human scene, and to relate 
it to its necessary spiritual background, we view it more 
soberly than in youth, but with increasing hopefulness. 
We understand that our mistaken estimate of it was 
mistaken because it was so partial. We were looking 
for immediate returns in terms of personal profit or 
pleasure, and we were disappointed by our failure to find 
an ideal society, or men really wanting one. Or if we 
had been religiously educated we were tremendously dis- 
appointed in the failure of spiritual ideals to grip men: 
in men’s lackadaisical attitude towards what seems to us 
the fundamental problems of life. Now at length we 
understand the partialness and fragmentariness of our 
outlook. We understand that human life is indeed a 
“tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying 
nothing” if it end here; if its interests are limited by its 
material accomplishments, and if its horizon is bounded by 
the hills of this material universe. Hope comes in, and 
only comes in, when life expands and overpasses “the 
flaming ramparts of the world,” and pushes its experience 
out into the silent realms of the supernatural, where it 
makes contact with God. 


O world invisible, we view thee, 
O world intangible, we touch thee, 
O world unknowable, we know thee, 
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! 


354 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


When we have conquered this new world, which is 
the “real world”; when we have grown into this new 
experience, this hope expands into thanksgiving and joy. 
We now look out on life and the feeling of depression 
has vanished, and we say, “Let us give thanks unto our 
Lord God.’ And all our nature answers, “It is meet 
and right so to do.” All the darkness and depression 
passes away and we, in a very real sense, “enter into the 
joy of the Lord.” We feel the energizing throb of the 
new life, and though much that is hard remains to be 
faced, we face it in a transformed spirit, in the spirit of 
those who have received the Spirit and know the Lord. 

Joy is at once an acquisition that we make, and a gift 
of God to us. When we respond to the grace of God 
and fight our way to spiritual victory we experience the 
joy of those who are “more than conquerors” and the 
reward is that supernatural gift of the Spirit, which is 
joy in the Holy Ghost. Not mere pleasure, or exulta- 
tion, or the sense of success in the triumphing over dif- 
ficulties, but a sense of the Divine approbation which 
crowns our efforts and pacifies our lives. 

It is necessary that we push on to the stage of spiritual 
acquisition. Otherwise our lives will remain unquiet 
and restless in the sense of their emptiness. The spirit- 
ual life cannot stop short of fruit. The planting and the 
watering are preparatory to the increase. This God alone 
can give. But He gives it to those who, by the faithful 
use of grace, have fitted themselves to use it. One 
fancies sometimes that there are fruits of the spirit of 
which we have small appreciation, and such a one is 
joy. Happiness we understand and long after. For it 
we are willing to sacrifice much. Pleasure we seek with 


THE SURSUM CORDA 355 


unappeased appetite. However, it is the common ex- 
perience that what we gain is 


That unrest which men mis-call delight. 


It is no doubt easy to insist on the limitations of 
pleasure and its incapacity to insure happiness. A nov- 
elist of the last century chose for his epitaph these words, ° 
which embody a universal experience. “I had much 
pleasure, but I have never been happy.’ This failure 
is commonly due to a confusion of values. The value 
that is prominent is not pleasure, nor happiness, but that 
gift of the Spirit, which is joy. It is at this that we aim 
in the spiritual life. It is this which crowns our spirit- 
ual development. Whatever the world may think of 
religion, one of its prime ends is joy. And the saint 
must achieve this, or his sanctity is not complete. In 
the process of canonization the official who has charge of 
the investigation is instructed to ask whether the servant 
of God whose canonization is sought showed himself 
habitually joyful, and the religious view of the matter is 
summed up in the traditional saying, “A saint that is sad 
is a sad saint.” There is a story of a poor little sick 
girl, who was taken ill one Christmas and taken to the 
hospital. While there she heard the story of Jesus com- 
ing to save the world. It was all new to her and she 
was fascinated by it. One day when the nurse came 
around the girl said, “I have been having such good times 
here, but I suppose I shall have to go away. But I am 
going to take some of the good time with me. Do you 
know about Jesus being born?’ 

“Yes,” said the nurse, “but keep quiet. Don’t. talk 
any more.” 


356 MEDITATIONS ON THE COMMUNION OFFICE 


“You do?” said the child. “I thought you looked as 
if you didn’t, and I was going to tell you.” 

“Why, how did I look?” asked the nurse. 

“Oh, just like most folks, kind of glum. I shouldn’t 
think you would ever look glum if you knew about Jesus 
being born.” 

Joy, in the complete sense, can only be experienced in 
the unified life. So many Christians “look kind of glum” 
because they haven’t experienced escape from the torture 
of a divided life. “Torture” may seem a strong word, but 
in reality it is not too strong to express the fact with 
many a life we all know; especially all priests know so 
many people whose life is a long struggle between. in- 
clination and ideal knowledge. The ideal has never be- 
come the inclination. In such lives Christianity is a 
taste, and not a passion, and can Christianity ever master 
anyone until it becomes a passion? ‘Those who are hun- 
gry for the world, who have unsatisfied craving for amuse- 
ment, can never see the joy of the Christian life. They 
glimpse Christian values as the traveller glimpses the far- 
off mountains from the window of the moving train. 
They give an impression of beauty, but the impression is 
too fleeting to last. It is only when we have effected a 
choice which rules us and puts in a subordinate place 
values other than spiritual that these latter values so far 
master us as to fill our hearts with joy and gladness. 

And what a joy that is, the joy of those who have 
found the great treasure. They can now look out upon 
the world with eyes that see it clearly. They have lost 
the unfounded optimism of youth, and so all values with 
terms of immediate gratification and within reach of 
those who serve the world faithfully. They have lost 
the pessimism, which is the natural reaction of the failure 


THE SURSUM CORDA 357 


of youthful dreams. Because they dream wrongly about 
the world they do not therefore conclude that the world 
has no value. It has great value, and it has great value 
to them. Only now they see it to be the value of an 
instrument and not of an end. It even contains joy of its 
own, which they can enter into and use. “All joys that 
belong to the order of Providence can, for the children of ° 
God, be instruments of grace. ... In the soul that is 
in the state of grace every joy that is not forbidden, and 
with which no sin mingles, becomes divine.” We do not 
forsake the world; we use the world, and we use it to 
more purpose and with more profit precisely because we 
own no illusions as to the character of its values. For the 
present our place is in the world, where we ought to 
ply our trade as the merchants of God, where we ought 
to use the talents wherewith we are endowed to earn 
the merits which shall solicit the rich reward of God’s 
grace. But all the time of our pilgrimage here, while 
we are going about the world in our daily task as those 
whose time is short, and who look for the return of 
their Master, we go gladly and joyfully as those 


Who carry music in their heart, 

Through dusty lane and wrangling mart, 

Plying their daily task with busier feet, 
Because their secret souls a holier strain repeat. 

























































































































































































